Religio medici ;

THOMAS BROWNE

RELIGIO MEDICI,

AND OTHER

ESSAYS

JAMES K.MOFFITT

PAULINE FORE MOFFITT
LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
GENERAL LIBRARY, BERKELEY

RELIGIO MEDICI, URN BURIAL, CHRISTIAN
MORALS, AND OTHER ESSAYS.

BY
SIR THOMAS BROWNE.

INDEX.

Rcligio Medici . . .:' / . 4 \ vii

Hydriotaphia : Urn Burial . 10 < U . * Ixxxiv

Letter to a Friend , cxxiii

Christian Morals . cxxxix

On Dreams cxciii

RELIGIO MEDICI. TO THE
READER.

TO THE READER.

CERTAINLY that man were greedy of life, who should desire
to live when all the world were at an end; and he must needs
be very impatient, who would repine at death in the society of
all things that suffer under it. Had not almost every man suffered
by the press, or were not the tyranny thereof become universal,
I had not wanted reason for complaint: but in times wherein I
have lived to behold the highest perversion of that excellent in-
vention, the name of his Majesty defamed, the honour of Parlia-
ment depraved, the writings of both depravedly, anticipatively,
counterfeitly, imprinted: complaints may seem ridiculous in
private persons ; and men of my condition may be as incapable
of affronts, as hopeless of their reparations. And truly had not the
duty I owe unto the importunity of friends, and the allegiance
I must ever acknowledge unto truth, prevailed with me; the
inactivity of my disposition might have made these sufferings
continual, and time, that brings other things to light, should have
satisfied me in the remedy of its oblivion. But, because things
evidently false are not only printed, but many things of truth most
falsely set forth; in this latter I could not but think myself en-
gaged: for, though we have no power to redress the former, yet
in the other the reparation being within ourselves , I have at present
represented untotheworldafull and intended copy of that piece,
which was most imperfectlyand surreptitiouslypublished before.
This I confess, about seven years past, with some others of
affinity thereto, for my private exercise and satisfaction, I had at
leisurable hours composed; which being communicated unto
one, it became common unto many, and was by transcription
successively corrupted, until it arrived in a most depraved copy
at the press. He that shall peruse that work, and shall take notice
of sundry particular sand personal expressions therein, will easily
discern the intention was not publick: and, being a private exer-
cise directed to myself, what is delivered therein was rather a
memorial unto me, than an example or rule unto any other: and
therefore, if there be any singularity therein correspondent unto
the private conceptions of any man, it doth not advantage them;
or if dissentaneous thereunto, it no way overthrows them. It was
penned in such a place, and with such disadvantage, that (I pro-
test), from the first setting of pen unto paper, I had not the assist-
ance of any good book, whereby to promote my invention, or
relieve my memory; andthereforetheremiqhtbemanyreal lapses
therein, which others might take notice of and more than I sus-

pected myself. It was set down many years past, and was the
sense of my conceptions at that time, not an immutable law unto
my advancing judgment at all times; and therefore there might
be many things therein plausible unto my passed apprehension,
which are not agreeable unto my present self. There are many
things delivered rhetorically, many expressions therein merely
tropical, andas they best illustrate my intention ; and therefore also
there are many things to be taken in a soft and flexible sense, and
not to be called unto the rigid test of reason. Lastly, all that iscon--
tained therein is in submission unto maturer discernments; and,
as I have declared, shall no further father them than the best and
learned judgments shall authorize them: under favour of which
considerations, I have made its secrecy publick, and committed
the truth thereof to every ingenuous reader.

THOMAS BROWNE.

VI

>

RELIGIO MEDICI.
FOR my religion, though there be several circumstances that
might persuade the world I have none at all, — as the general
scandal of my profession, — the natural course of my studies, —
the indifferency of my behaviour and discourse in matters of re-
ligion (neither violently defending one, nor with that common
ardour and contention opposing another) , — yet, in despite hereof,
I dare without usurpation assume the honourable style of a
Christian. Not that I merely owe this title to the font, my edu-
cation, or the clime wherein I was born, as being bred up either
to confirm those principles my parents instilled into my unwary
understanding, or by a general consent proceed in the religion
of my country ; but that having, in my riper years and confirmed
judgment, seen and examined all, I find myself obliged, by the
principles of grace, and the law of mine own reason, to embrace
no other name but this : neither doth herein my zeal so far make
me forget the general charity I owe unto humanity, as rather to
hate than pity Turks, Infidels, and (what is worse) Jews; rather
contenting myself to enjoy that happy style, than maligning those
who refuse so glorious a title.
>^^ Quousque patiere, bone Jesu !
Judaei te semel, ego saepius crucifixi ;
Illi in Asia, ego in Britannia,
Qallia, Qermania;

Bone Jesu, miserere mei, et Judaeorum.
II

BUT, because the name of a Christian is become too general
to express our faith, — there being a geography of religion as well
as lands, and every clime not only distinguished by its laws and
limits, but circumscribed by its doctrines and rules of faith, — to
be particular, I am of that reformed new-cast religion, wherein
I dislike nothing but the name; of the same belief our Saviour
taught, the apostles disseminated, the fathers authorized, and the
martyrs confirmed; but, by the sinister ends of princes, the am-
bition and avarice of prelates, and the fatal corruption of times
so decayed, impaired, and fallen from its native beauty, that it
required the careful and charitable hands of these times to restore
it to its primitive integrity. Now, the accidental occasion where-
upon, the slender means whereby, the low and abject condition
of the person by whom, so good a work was set on foot, which
in our adversaries beget contempt and scorn fill me with wonder
and are the very same objections the insolent pagans first cast at
Christ and His disciples.

111 ,

YET I have not so shaken hands with those desperate reso-
lutions who had rather venture at large their decayed bottom,
than bring her in to be new trimmed in the dock, — who had
rather promiscuously retain all, than abridge any, and obstinately
be what they are, than what they have been, — as to stand in dia-
meter and sword's point with them. We have reformed from
them, not against them : for, omitting those improperations and
terms of scurrility betwixt us, which only difference our affections,
and not our cause, there is between us one common name and
appellation, one faith and necessary body of principles common
to us both ; and therefore I am not scrupulous to converse and
live with them, to enter their churches in defect of ours, and either
pray with them or for them. I could never perceive any rational
consequence from those many texts which prohibit the children
of Israel to pollute themselves with the temples of the heathens;
we being all Christians, and not divided by such detested im-
pieties as might profane our prayers, or the place wherein we
make them; or that a resolved conscience may not adore her
Creator anywhere, especially in places devoted to His service;
where, if their devotions offend Him, mine may please him ; if
theirs profane it, mine may hallow it. Holy water and crucifix
(dangerous to the common people) deceive not my judgment,
nor abuse my devotion at all. I am, I confess, naturally inclined
to that which misguided zeal terms superstition: my common
conversation I do acknowledge austere, my behaviour full of
rigour, sometimes not without morosity; yet, at my devotion I
love to use the civility of my knee, my hat, and hand, with all
those outward and sensible motions which may express or pro-
mote my invisible devotion I should violate my own arm rather
than a church ; nor willingly deface the name of saint or martyr.
At the sight of a cross, or crucifix, I can dispense with my hat,
but scarce with the thought or memory of my Saviour. I cannot
laugh at, but rather pity, the fruitless journeys of pilgrims, or con-
temn the miserable condition of friars; for, though misplaced in
circumstances, there is something in it of devotion. I could never
hear the Ave-Mary bell* without an elevation, or think it a suf-

* A church-bell, that tolls every day at six and twelve of the
clock; at the hearing whereof every one, in what place soever,
either of house or street, betakes himself to his prayer, which is
commonly directed to the Virgin,
viii

ficient warrant, because they erred in one circumstance, for me
to err in all, — that is, in silence and dumb contempt. Whilst,
therefore, they directed their devotions to her, I offered mine to
God; and rectified the errors of their prayers by rightly ordering
mine own. At a solemn procession I have wept abundantly,
while my consorts, blind with opposition and prejudice, have
fallen into an excess of scorn and laughter. There are, question*-
less, both in Greek, Roman, and African churches, solemnities
and ceremonies, whereof the wiser zeals do make a Christian
use; and which stand condemned by us, not as evil in themselves,
but as allurements and baits of superstition to those vulgar heads
that look asquint on the face of truth, and those unstable judg-
ments that cannot consist in the narrow point and centre of virtue
without a reel or stagger to the circumference.
IV

AS there were many reformers, so likewise many reforma-
tions ; every country proceeding in a particular way and method,
according as their national interest, together with their constitu-
tion and clime, inclined them : some angrily and with extremity;
others calmly and with mediocrity, not rending, but easily di-
viding, the community, and leaving an honest possibility of a
reconciliation ; — which, though peaceable spirits do desire, and
may conceive that revolution of time and the mercies of God may
effect, yet that judgment that shall consider the present antipathies
between the two extremes, — their contrarieties in condition, af-
fection, and opinion, — may, with the same hopes, expect a union
in the poles of heaven.
V

BUT, to difference myself nearer, and draw into a lesser circle;
there is no church whose everypart so squares unto myconscience,
whose articles, constitutions, and customs, seem so consonant
unto reason, and, as it were, framed to my particular devotion, as
this whereof I hold my belief — the church of England; to whose
faith I am a sworn subject, and therefore, in a double obligation,
subscribe unto her articles, and endeavour to observe her con-
stitutions : whatsoever is beyond, as points indifferent, I observe,
according to the rules of my private reason, or the humour and
fashion of my devotion ; neither believing this because Luther
affirmed it, nor disproving that because Calvin hath disavouched
it. I condemn not all things in the council of Trent, nor approve
all in the synod of Dort. In brief, where the Scripture is silent,
the church is my text; where that speaks, 'tis but my comment;
ix b

where there is a joint silence of both,I borrow not the rules of my
religion from Rome or Geneva, but from the dictates of my own
reason. It is an unjust scandal of our adversaries, and a gross error
in ourselves, to compute the nativity of our religion from Henry
the Eighth; who, though he rejected the Pope, refused not the
faith of Rome, and effected no more than what his own prede-
cessors desired and essayed in ages past, and it was conceived the
state of Venice would nave attempted in our days. It is as un~
charitable a point in us to fall upon those popular scurrilities and
opprobrious scoffs of the Bishop of Rome, to whom, as a temporal
prince, we owe the duty of good language. I confess there is a
cause of passion between us: by his sentence I stand excom-
municated; heretic is the best language he affords me: yet can no
ear witness I ever returned to him the name of antichrist, man of
sin, or whore of Babylon. It is the method of charity to suffer
without reaction: those usual satires and invectives of the pulpit
may perchance produce a good effect on the vulgar, whose ears
are opener to rhetoric than logic; yet do they, in no wise, confirm
the faith of wiser believers, who know that a good cause needs
not to be patroned by passion, but can sustain itself upon a tem-
perate dispute.
VI

I COULD never divide myself from any man upon the differ-
ence of an opinion, or be angry with his judgment for not agreeing
with me in that from which, perhaps, within a few days, I should
dissent my self. I have no genius to disputes in religion: and have
often thought it wisdom to decline them, especially upon a dis-
advantage, or when the cause of truth might suffer in the weakness
of my patronage. Where we desire to be informed, 'tis good to
contest with men above ourselves; but, to confirm and establish
our opinions, 'tis best to argue with judgments below our own,
that the frequent spoils and victories over their reasons may settle
in ourselves an esteem and confirmed opinion of our own. Every
man is not a proper champion for truth, nor fit to take up the gaunt-
let in the cause of verity ; many , from the ignorance of these maxims ,
and an inconsiderate zeal unto truth, have too rashly charged the
troops of error and remain as trophies unto the enemies of truth.
A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet
be forced to surrender; 'tis therefore far better to enjoy her with
peace than to hazard her on a battle. If, therefore, there rise any
doubts in my way, I do forget them, or at least defer them, till my
better settled judgment and more manly reason be able to resolve

them; for I perceive every man's own reason is his best CEdipus,
and will upon a reasonable truce, find a way to loose those bonds
wherewith the subtleties of error have enchained our more flexible
andtender judgments. Inphilosophy, where truthseemsdouble-
faced, there is no man more paradoxical than myself: but in di-
vinity I love to keep the road; and, though not in an implicit, yet
an humble faith, follow the great wheel of the church, by which
I move; not reserving any proper poles, or motion from the epi-
cycle of my own brain, by this means I leave no gap for heresy,
schisms, or errors, of which at present, I hope I shall not injure
truth to say, I have no taint or tincture. I must confess my greener
studies have been polluted with two or three; not any begotten
in the latter centuries, but old and obsolete, such as could never
have been revived but by such extravagant and irregular heads
as mine. For, indeed, heresies perish not with their authors; but,
like the river Arethusa, though they lose their currents in one place,
they rise up again in another. One general council is not able to
extirpate one single heresy: it may be cancelled for the present;
but revolution of time, and the like aspects from heaven, will
restore it, when it will flourish till it be condemned again. For,
as though there were a metempsychosis, and the soul of one man
passed into another, opinions do finoVafter certain revolutions,
men and minds like those that first begat them. To see ourselves
again, we need not look for Plato's year:* every man is not only
himself; there have been many Diogeneses , and as many Ximons,
though but few of that name; men are lived over again; theworld
is now as it was in ages past; there was none then, but there hath
been some one since, that parallels him, and is, as it were, his re-
vived self.
VII

NOW, the first of mine was that of the Arabians; that the souls
of men perished with their bodies, but should yet be raised again
at the last day: not that I did absolutely conceive a mortality of
the soul, but if that were (which faith, not philosophy, hath yet
thoroughly disproved), and that both entered the grave together,
yet I held the same conceit thereof that we all do of the body, that
it should rise again. Surely it is but the merits of our unworthy
natures, if we sleep in darkness until the last alarum. A serious

% A revolution of certain thousand years, when all things should
return unto their former estate, and he be teaching again in his
school, as when he delivered this opinion,
xi

reflex upon my own un worthiness did make me backward from
challenging this prerogative of my soul : so that I might enjoy
my Saviour at the last, I could with patience be nothing almost
unto eternity. The second was that of Origen; that God would
not persist in his vengeance for ever, but, after a definite time of
his wrath, would release the damned souls from torture; which
error Ifell into upon a serious contemplation of the great attribute
of God, his mercy; and did a little cherish it in myself, because
I found therein no malice, and a ready weight to sway me from
the other extreme of despair, whereunto melancholy and con-
templative natures are too easily disposed. A third there is, which
I didnever positively maintain or practise, but have often wished
it had been consonant to truth, and not offensive to my religion ;
and that is, the prayer for the dead ; whereunto I was inclined
from some charitable inducements, whereby I could scarce con-
tain my prayers for a friend at the ringing of a bell, or behold his
corpse without an orison for his soul. 'Twas a good way, me-
thought, to be remembered by posterity, and farmore noble than
a history. These opinions I never maintained with pertinacity,
or endeavoured to inveigle any man's belief unto mine, nor so
much as ever revealed, or disputed them with my dearest friends;
by which means I neither propagated them in others, nor con-
firmed them in myself: but, suffering them to flame upon their
own substance, without addition of new fuel, they went out in-
sensibly of themselves; therefore these opinions, though con-
demned by lawful councils, were not heresies in me, but bare
errors, and single lapses of my understanding, without a joint
depravity of my will. Those have not only depraved under-
standings, but diseased affections, which cannot enjoy a singu-
larity without a heresy, or be the author of an opinion without
they be of a sect also. This was the villany of the first schism of
Lucifer; who was not content to err alone, but drew into his fac-
tion many legions of spirits; and upon this experience he tempted
only Eve, well understanding the communicable nature of sin,
and that to deceive but one was tacitly and upon consequence
to delude them both.
VIII

THAT heresies should arise, we have the prophecy of Christ;
but, that old ones should be abolished, we hold no prediction.
That there must be heresies, is true, not only in our church, but
also in any other: even in the doctrines heretical there will be
superheresies; and Arians,not only divided from the church, but
xii

also among themselves : for heads that are disposed unto schism,
and complexionally prepense to innovation, are naturally indis-
posed for a community ; nor will be ever confined unto the order
or economy of one body; and therefore, when they separate from
others, they knit but loosely among themselves ; nor contented
with a general breach or dichotomy with their church, do sub-
divide and mince themselves almost into atoms. 'Tis true, that
men of singular parts and humours have not been free from singular
opinions and conceits in all ages ; retaining something, not only
beside the opinion of their own church, or any other, but also
any particular author ; which, notwithstanding, a sober judgment
may do without offence or heresy; for there are yet, after all the
decrees of councils, and the niceties of the schools, many things,
untouched, unimagined, wherein the liberty of an honest reason
may play and expatiate with security, and far without the circle
of a heresy,
IX

AS for those wingy mysteries in divinity, and airy subtleties in
religion, which have unhinged the brains of better heads, they
never stretched the pia mater of mine. Methinks there be not
impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith: the deepest
mysteries ours contains have not only been illustrated, but main-
tained, by syllogism and the rule of reason. I love to lose myself
inamystery; to pursue my reason to an O altitude! "Tis my solitary
recreation to pose my apprehension with those involved enigmas
and riddles of the Trinity — incarnation and resurrection. I can
answer all the objections of Satan and my rebellious reason with
that odd resolution I learned of Tertullian, Certum est quia im-
possibile est. I desire to exercise my faith in the difficultest point;
for, to credit ordinary and visible objects, is not faith, but per-
suasion. Some believe the better for seeing Christ's sepulchre ;
and, when they have seen the Red Sea, doubt not of the miracle.
Now, contrarily, I bless myself, and am thankful, that I lived not
in the days of miracles; that I never saw Christ nor His disciples.
I would not have been one of those Israelites that passed the Red
Sea; nor one of Christ's patients,on whom He wrought His won-
ders: then had my faith been thrust upon me; nor should I enjoy
that greater blessing pronounced to all that believe and saw not.
'Tis an easy and necessary belief, to credit what our eye and sense
hath examined. I believe He was dead,andburied,and rose again;
and desire to see Him in His glory, rather than to contemplate
Him in His cenotaph or sepulchre. Nor is this much to believe;
xiii

as we have reason, we owe this faith unto history: they only had
the advantage of a bold and noble faith, who lived before His
coming, who, upon obscure prophecies and mystical types, could
raise a belief, and expect apparent impossibilities.

d?V

'TIS true, there is an edge in all firm belief, and with an easy
metaphor we may say, the sword of faith; but in these obscurities
I rather use it in the adjunct the apostle gives it, a buckler; under
which I conceive a wary combatant may lie invulnerable. Since
I was of understanding to know that we know nothing, my reason
hath been more pliable to the will of faith: I am now content to
understand a mystery, without a rigid definition, in an easy and
Platonic description. That allegorical description of Hermes*
pleaseth me beyond all the metaphysical definitions of divines.
Where I cannot satisfy my reason, I love to humour my fancy:
I had as lieve you tell me that anima est angelus hominis, est
corpus Dei, as evreXe^eta ; — lux est umbra Dei, as actus perspicui.
Where there is an obscurity too deep for our reason, 'tis good to
sit down with a description, periphrasis, or adumbration; for, by
acquainting our reason howunaole it is to display the visible and
obvious effects of nature, it becomes more humble and submis-
sive unto the subtleties of faith: and thus I teach my haggard and
unreclaimed reason to stoop unto the lure of faith. 1 believe there
was already a tree, whose fruit our unhappy parents tasted, though
in the same chapter where God forbids it, tis positively said, the
plants of the field were not yet grown; for God had not caused
it to rain upon the earth. I believe that the serpent (if we shall
literally under stand it), from his proper form and figure, made his
motion on his belly, before the curse. I find the trial of the puce-
lage and virginity of women, which God ordained the Jews, is
very fallible. Experience and history informs me that, not only
many particular women, but likewise whole nations, have es-
caped the curse of childbirth, which God seems to pronounce
upon the whole sex; yet do I believe thatall this is true, which in-
deed, my reason would persuade me to be false: and this, I think,
isnovulgarpartof faith, to believe athingnot only above, but con-
trary to, reason, and against the arguments of our proper senses.

IN my solitary and retired imagination (neque enim, cum
porticus aut me lectulus accepit, desum mihi) I remember I am

* "Sphaera cujus centrum ubique, circumferentia nullibi."
xiv

hot alone; and therefore forget not to contemplate Him and His
attributes, who is ever with me, especially those two mighty
ones, His wisdom and eternity. With the one I recreate, with the
other I confound, my understanding: for who can speak of
eternity without a solecism, or think thereof without an ecstasy.^
Time we may comprehend ; 'tis but five days older than our»-
selves,and hath thesame horoscope with the world; but, to retire
so far back as to apprehend a beginning, — to give such an infinite
start forwards as to conceive an end, — in an essence that we affirm
hath neither the one nor the other, it puts my reason to St. Paul's
sanctuary: my philosophy dares not say the angels can do it.
God hath not made a creature that can comprehend Him ; 'tis a
privilege of His own nature: " I am that I am" was His own de~
finition unto Moses; and 'twas a short one to confound mortality,
that durst question God, or ask Him what He was. Indeed, He
only is; all others have and shall be; but, in eternity, there is no
distinction of tenses; and therefore that terrible term, predesti-
nation, which hath troubled so many weak heads to conceive,
and the wisest to explain, is in respect to God no prescious de*-
termination of our estates to come, but a definitive blast of His
will already fulfilled, and at the instant that He first decreed it ; for,
to His eternity, which is indivisible, and altogether, the last trump
is already sounded, the reprobates in the flame, and the blessed
in Abraham's bosom. St. Peter speaks modestly, when he saith,
"a thousand years to God are but as one day"; for, to speak like
a philosopher, those continued instances of time, which flow into
a thousand years, make not to Him one moment. What to us is
to come, to His eternity is present ; His whole duration being but
one permanent point, without succession, parts, flux, or division.
XII

THERE is no attribute that adds more difficulty to the
mystery of the Trinity, where, though in a relative way of Father
and Son, we must deny a priority. I wonder how Aristotle could
conceive the world eternal, or how he could make good two
eternities. His similitude, of a triangle comprehended in a square,
doth somewhat illustrate the trinity of our souls and that the triple
unity of God; for there is in us not three, but a trinity of, souls;
because there is in us, if not three distinct souls, yet differing
faculties, that can and do subsist apart in different subjects, and
yet in us are thus united as to make but one soul and substance.
If one soul were so perfect as to inform three distinct bodies, that
were a petty trinity. Conceive the distinct number of three, not
xv

divided nor separated by the intellect, but actually comprehended
in its unity, and that is a perfect trinity. I have often admired the
mystical way of Pythagoras, and the secret magick of numbers.
" Beware of philosophy," is a precept not to be received in too
large a sense: for, in this mass of nature, there is a set of things
that carry in their front, though not in capital letters, yet in steno-
graphy and short characters, something of divinity; which, to
wiser reasons, serve as luminaries in the abyss of knowledge, and,
to judicious beliefs, as scales and rundles to mount the pinnacles
and highest pieces of divinity. The severe schools shall never
laugh meoutof the philosophy of Hermes, that this visible world
is but a picture of the invisible, wherein, as in a portrait, things
are not truly , but in equivocal shapes, andas they counterfeit some
real substance in that invisible fabrick.
XIII

THAT other attribute, wherewith I recreate my devotion, is
His wisdom, in which I am happy; and for the contemplation of
this only do not repent me that I was bred in the way of study.
The advantage I have of the vulgar, with the content and happi-
ness I conceive therein, is an ample recompense for all my en-
deavours, in what part of knowledge soever. Wisdom is His most
beauteous attribute: no man can attain unto it: yet Solomon
pleased God when he desired it. He is wise, because He knows
all things ; and He knoweth all things, because He made them all :
but His greatest knowledge is in comprehending that He made
not, that is, Himself. And this is also the greatest knowledge in
man. For this do I honour my own profession, and embrace the
counsel even of the devil himself: had he read such a lecture in
Paradise as he did at Delphos,* we had better known ourselves;
nor had we stood in fear to know him. I know God is wise in
all; wonderful in what we conceive, but far more in what we
comprehend not: for we behold Him but asquint, upon reflex or
shadow; our understanding is dimmer than Moses* eye; we are
ignorant of the back parts or lower side of His divinity ; therefore,
to pry into the maze of His counsels, is not wholly folly in man,
but presumption even in angels. Like us, they are His servants,
not His senators; He holds no council, but that mystical one of
the Trinity, wherein, though there be three persons, there is but
one mind that decrees "without contradiction. Nor needs He any:
His actions are not begot with deliberation; His wisdom naturally

* Tvu>6i a-eavrov. Nosce teipsum.
xvi

knows what's best: His intellect stands ready fraught with the

superlative and purest ideas of goodness: consultation and elec~

tion, which are two motions in us, make but one in Him: His

actions springing from His power at the first touch of His will.

These are contemplations metaphysical: my humble speculations

have another method, and are content to trace and discover those

expressions He hath left in His creatures, and the obvious effects

of nature. There is no danger to profound these mysteries, no

sanctum sanctorum in philosophy. The world was made to be

inhabited by beasts, but studied and contemplated by man: 'tis

the debt of our reason we owe unto God, and the homage we

pay for not being beasts. Withoutthis, the world is still as though

it had not been, or as it was before the sixth day, when as yet

there was not a creature that could conceive or say there was a

world. The wisdom of God receives small honour from those

vulgar heads that rudely stare about, and with a gross rusticity

admire His works. Those highly magnify Him, whose judicious

enquiry into His acts, and deliberate research into His creatures,

return the duty of a devout and learned admiration. Therefore,

"S^^Search while thou wilt; and let thy reason go,

To ransom truth, e'en to th' abyss below;

Rally the scattered causes ; and that line

Which nature twists be able to untwine.

It is thy Maker's will; for unto none

But unto reason can He e'er be known.

The devils do know Thee; but those damn'd meteors

Build not Thy glory, but confound Thy creatures.

Teach me endeavours so Thy works to read,

That learning them in Thee I may proceed.

Give Thou my reason that instructive flight,

Whose weary wings may on Thy hands still light.

Teach me to soar aloft, yet ever so,

When near the sun, to stoop again below.

Thus shall my humble feathers safely hover,

And, though near earth, more than the heav'ns discover.

And then at last, when homeward I shall drive,

Rich with the spoils of nature, to my hive,

There will I sit, like that industrious fly,

Buzzing Thy praises ; which shall never die

Till death abrupts them, and succeeding glory

Bid me go on in a more lasting story.

And this is almost all wherein an humble creature may endeavour

xvii c

to requite, and someway to retribute unto his Creator: for, if not
he that saith, Lord, Lord, but he that doeth the will of the Father,
shall be saved, certainly our wills must be our performances, and
our intents make out our actions; otherwise our pious labours
shall find anxiety in our graves, and our best endeavours not hope,
but fear, a resurrection.
XIV

THERE is but one first cause, and four second causes, of all
things. Somearewithoutefficient,asGod; others without matter,
asangels; somewithoutform,as the first matter: buteveryessence,
created or uncreated, hath its final cause, and some positive end
both of its essence and operation. This is the cause I grope after
in the works of nature; on this hangs the providence of God. To
raise so beauteous a structure as the world and the creatures thereof
was but His art; but their sundry and divided operations, with
their predestinated ends, are from the treasury of His wisdom. In
the causes, nature, and affections, of the eclipses of the sun and
moon,thereismostexcellentspeculation;but,toprofoundfarther,
and to contemplate a reason why His providence hath so disposed
and ordered their motions in that vast circle, as to conjoin and
obscure each other, is a sweeter piece of reason, and a diviner
point of philosophy. Therefore, sometimes, and in some things,
there appears to me as much divinity in Galen his books, " De
Usu Partium/'as in Suarez'sMetaphysicks. Had Aristotle been
as curious in the enquiry of this cause as he was of the other, he
had not left behind him an imperfect piece of philosophy, but
an absolute tract of divinity.
XV

NATURA nihil agit frustra, is the only indisputable axiom in
philosophy. There are no grotesques in nature; not anything
framed to fill up empty Cantons, and unnecessary spaces. In the
most imperfect creatures, and such as were not preserved in the
ark, but, having their seeds and principles in the womb of nature,
are every where, where the power of the sun is, — in these is the
wisdom of His hand discovered. Out of this rank Solomon chose
the object of his admiration ; indeed, what reason may not go to
school to the wisdom of bees, ants, and spiders.^ What wise hand
teacheth them to do what reason cannot teach us / Ruder heads
stand amazed at those prodigious pieces of nature, whales, ele--
phants, dromedaries, and camels; these, I confess, are the colos--
suses and majestickpieces of her hand ; butin these narrow-engines
there is more curious mathematics; and the civility of these little
xviii

citizens more neatly sets forth the wisdom of their Maker. Who
admires not Regie- Montanus his fly beyond his eagle; or won-
ders not more at the operation of two souls in those little bodies
than but one in the trunk of a cedar r' I could never content my
contemplation with those general pieces of wonder, the flux and
reflux of the sea, the increase of Nile, the conversion of the needle
to the north; and have studied to match and parallel those in the
more obvious and neglected pieces of nature which, without
farther travel, I can do in the cosmography of myself. We carry
with us the wonders we seek without us : there is all Africa and
her prodigies in us. We are that bold and adventurous piece of
nature, which he that studies wisely learns, in a compendium,
what others labour at in a divided piece and endless volume.
XVI

THUS there are two books from whence I collect my divinity.
Besides that written one of God, another of His servant, nature,
that universal and publick manuscript, that lies expansed unto
the eyes of all. Those that never saw Him in the one have dis-
covered Him in the other: this was the scripture and theology
of the heathens; the natural motion of the sun made them more
admire Him than its supernatural station did the children of Israel.
The ordinary effects of nature wrought more admiration in them
than,inthe other,all His miracles. Surelythe heathens knewbetter
how to join and read these mystical letters than we Christians,
who cast a more careless eye on these common hieroglyphics,
and disdain to suck divinity from the flowers of nature. Nor do
I so forget God as to adore the name of nature ; which I define
not, with the schools, to be the principle of motion and rest, but
that straight and regular line, that settled and constant course the
wisdom of God hath ordained the actions of His creatures, ac-
cording to their several kinds. To make a revolution every day
is the nature of the sun, because of that necessary course which
God hath ordained it, from which it cannot swerve but by a faculty
from that voice which first did give it motion. Now this course
of nature God seldom alters or perverts; but, like an excellent
artist, hath so contrived His work, that, with the self-same in-
strument, -without a new creation, He may effect His obscurest
designs. Thus He sweeteneth the water with a wood, preserveth
the creatures in the ark, which the blast of His mouth might have
as easily created; — for God is like a skilful geometrician, who,
when more easily, and with one stroke of his compass, he might
describe or divide a right line, had yet rather do this in a circle
xix

or longer way, according to the constituted and forelaidprinciples
of his art: yet this rule of His He doth sometimes pervert, to ac-
quaint the world with His prerogative, lest the arrogancy of our
reason should question His power, and conclude He could not.
And thus I call the effects of nature the works of God, whose
hand and instrument she only is; and therefore, to ascribe His
actions unto her is to devolve the honour of the principal agent
upon the instrument; which if with reason we may do, then let
our hammers rise up and boast they have built our houses, and
our pens receive the honour of our writings. I hold there is a
general beauty in the works of God, and therefore no deformity
in any kind of species or creature whatsoever. I cannot tell by
what logickwe call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly; they being
created in those outward shapes and figures which best express
the actions of their inward forms; and having passed that general
visitation of God, who saw that all that He had made was good,
that is, conformable to His will, which abhors deformity, and is
the rule of order and beauty. There is no deformity but in mon-
strosity; wherein, notwithstanding, there is a kind of beauty;
nature so ingeniously contriving the irregular parts, as they be-
come sometimes more remarkable than the principal fabrick. To
speak yet more narrowly , there was never anything ugly or mis-
shapen,but the chaos ; wherein, notwithstanding,to speak strictly,
there was no deformity, because no form; nor was it yet impreg-
nate by the voice of God. Now nature is not at variance with art,
nor art with nature ; they being both the servants of His provi-
dence. Art is the perfection of nature. Were the world now as
it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made
one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for
nature is the art of God.
XVII

THIS is the ordinary and open way of His providence, which
art and industry have in good part discovered; whose effects
we may foretell without an oracle. To foreshow these is not
prophecy, but prognostication. There is another way, full of
meanders and labyrinths, whereof the devil and spirits have no
exact ephemerides : and that is a more particular and obscure
method of His providence ; directing the operations of individual
and single essences: this we call fortune; that serpentine and
crooked line, whereby He draws those actions His wisdom in-
tends in a more unknown and secret way; this cryptic and in-
volved method of His providence have I ever admired ; nor can
xx

I relate the history of my life, the occurrences of my days, the
escapes, or dangers, and hits of chance, with a bezo las manos to
Fortune, or a bare gramercy to my good stars. Abraham might
have thought the ram in the thicket came thither by accident :
humanreasonwouldhavesaidfthatmerechanceconveyedMoses
in the ark to the sight of Pharoah's daughter. What a labyrinth
is there in the story of Joseph ! able to convert a stoick. Surely
thereare in every man's life certain rubs, doublings, and wrenches,
which pass a while under the effects of chance : but at the last,
well examined, prove the mere hand of God. 'Xwas not dumb
chance that, to discover the fougade, or powder plot, contrived
a miscarriage in the letter. I like the victory of '88 the better for
that one occurrence which our enemies imputed to our dishonour,
and the partiality of fortune; to wit, the tempests and contrariety
of winds. King Philip did not detract from the nation, when he
said, he sent his armado to fight with men, and not to combat
with the winds. Where there is a manifest disproportion between
the powers and forces of two several agents, upon a maxim of
reason we may promise the victory to the superior : but when
unexpected accidents slip in, and unthought'-of occurrences in-
tervene, these must proceed from a power that owes no obedience
to those axioms ; where, as in the writing upon the wall, we may
behold the hand, butseenotthe spring thatmovesit. Thesuccess
of that petty province of Holland (of which the Grand Seignior
proudly said, if they should trouble him, as they did the Spaniard,
he would send his men with shovels and pickaxes, and throw it
into the sea) I cannot altogether ascribe to the ingenuity and in-
dustry of the people, but the mercy of God, that hath disposed
them to such a thriving genius; and to the will of His providence,
that dispenseth His favour to each country in their preordinate
season. All cannot be happy at once; for, because the glory of
one state depends upon the ruin of another, there is a revolution
and vicissitude of their greatness, and must obey the swing of
that wheel, not moved by intelligences, but by the hand of God,
whereby all estates arise to their zenith and vertical points, ac-
cording to their predestinated periods. For the lives, not only
of men, but of commonwealths and the whole world, run not
upon a helix that still enlargeth; but on a circle, where, arriving to
their meridian , they decline in obscurity , and fall under the horizon
again.
XVIII

THESE must not therefore be named the effects of fortune but
xxi

in a relative way, and as we term the works of nature. It was the
ignorance of man's reason that begat this very name, and by a
careless term miscalled the providence of God : for there is no
liberty for causes to operate in a loose and straggling way; nor
any effect whatsoever but hath its warrant from some universal
or superior cause. 'Tis not a ridiculous devotion to say a prayer
before a game at tables ; for, even in sortilegies and matters of
greatest uncertainty, there is a settled and preordered course of
effects. It is we that are blind, not fortune. Because our eye is
too dim to discover the mystery of her effects, we foolishly paint
her blind, and hoodwink the providence of the Almighty. I can-
not justify that contemptible proverb, that "fools only are fortu-
nate;" or that insolent paradox, that "a wise man is out of the
reach of fortune ; " much less those opprobrious epithets of poets,
— whore, bawd, and strumpet. 'Tis, I confess, the common fate
of men of singular gifts of mind, to be destitute of those of fortune ;
which doth not any way deject the spirit of wiser judgments
who thoroughly understand the justice of this proceeding; and,
being enriched with higher donatives, cast a more careless eye
on these vulgar parts of felicity. It is a most unjust ambition, to
desire to engross the mercies of the Almighty, not to be content
with the goods of mind, without a possession of those of body or
fortune: and it is an error, worse than heresy, to adore these com-
plimental and circumstantial pieces of felicity, and undervalue
those perfections and essential points of happiness, wherein we
resemble our Maker. To wiser desires it is satisfaction enough
to deserve, though not to enjoy, the favours of fortune. Let pro-
vidence provide for fools : 'tis not partiality, but equity, in God,
who deals -with us but as our natural parents. Those that are able
of body and mind He leaves to their deserts; to those of weaker
merits He imparts a larger portion; and pieces out the defect of
one by the excess of the other. Thus have we no just quarrel
with nature for leaving us naked; or to envy the horns, hoofs,
skins, and furs of other creatures ; being provided with reason,
that can supply them all. We need not labour, with so many
arguments, to confute judicial astrology; for, if there be a truth
therein, it doth not injure divinity. If to be born under Mercury
disposeth us to be witty; under Jupiter to be wealthy; I do not
owe a knee unto these, but unto that merciful hand that hath or-
dered my indifferent and uncertain nativity unto such bene volous
aspects. Those that hold, that all things are governed by fortune,
had not erred, had they not persisted there. The Romans, that
xxii

erected a temple to Fortune, acknowledged therein, though in
a blinder way, somewhat of divinity ; for, in a wise supputation,
all things begin and end in the Almighty. There is a nearer way
to heaven than Homer's chain ; an easy logick may conjoin a
heaven and earth in one argument, and, with less than a sorites,
resolve all things into God. For though we christen effects by
their most sensible and nearest causes, yet is God the true and
infallible cause of all; whose concourse, though it be general, yet
doth it subdivide itself into the particular actions of every thing,
and is that spirit, by which each singular essence not only sub~
sists, but performs its operation.
XIX

THE bad construction and perverse comment on these pair of
second causes, or visible hands of God, have perverted the de-
votionof many unto atheism ; who, forgetting the honest advisees
of faith, have listened unto the conspiracy ofpassion and reason.
I have therefore always endeavoured to compose those feuds and
angry dissensions between affection, faith, and reason: for there
is in our soul a kind of triumvirate, or triple government of three
competitors, which distracts the peace of this our commonwealth
not less than did that other the state of Rome.
As reason is a rebel unto faith, so passion unto reason. As the
propositions of faith seem absurd unto reason, so the theorems
of reason unto passion, and both unto reason ; yet a moderate and
peaceable discretion may so state and order the matter, that they
may be all kings, and yet make but one monarchy : every one
exercising his sovereignty andprerogativeinaduetimeand place,
according to the restraint and limit of circumstance. There are,
as in philosophy, so in divinity, sturdy doubts, and boisterous
objections, wherewith the unhappiness of our knowledge too
nearly acquainteth us. More of these no man hath known than
myself; which I confess I conquered, not in a martial posture, but
on my knees. For our endeavours are not only to combat with
doubts, but always to dispute with the devil. The villany of that
spirit takes a hint of infidelity from our studies : and, by demon'-
strating a neutrality in one way, makes us mistrust a miracle in
another. Thus, having perused the Archidoxes, and read the
secret sympathies of things, he would dissuade my belief from
the miracle of the Brazen Serpent ; make me conceit that image
worked by sympathy, and was but an Egyptian trick, to cure
their diseases without a miracle. Again, having seen some ex*-
periments of bitumen, and having read far more of naphtha, he
xxiii

whispered to my curiosity the fire of the altar might be natural,
and bade me mistrust a miracle in Elias, when he intrenched the
altar round with water: for that inflammable substance yields not
easily unto water, but flames in the arms of its antagonist. And thus
would he inveigle my belief to think the combustion of Sodom
might be natural, and that there was an asphal tick and bituminous
nature in that lake before the fire of Gomorrah. I know that manna
is now plentifully gathered in Calabria; and Josephus tells me,
in his days it was as plentiful in Arabia. The devil therefore made
the query, " where was then the miracle in the days of Moses S"
The Israelites sawbut that, inhis time, which the natives of those
countries behold in ours. Thus the devil played at chess with
me, and, yielding a pawn, thought to gain a queen of me; taking
advantage of my honest endeavours; and, whilst I laboured to
raise the structure of my reason, he strove to undermine the edifice
of my faith.
XX

NEITHER had these or any other ever such advantage of me,
as to incline me to any point of infidelity or desperate positions
of atheism ; for I have been these many years of opinion there
was never any. Those that held religion was the difference of
man frombeasts, have spokenprobably,andproceeduponaprin~
ciple as inductive as the other. That doctrine of Epicurus, that
denied the providence of God, was no atheism, but a magnificent
and high-strained conceit of His majesty, which he deemed too
sublime to mind the trivial actions of those inferior creatures.
That fatal Necessity of the Stoicks is nothing but the immutable
law of His will. Those that heretofore denied the divinity of the
Holy Ghost have been condemned but as hereticks; and those
that now deny our Saviour, though more than hereticks, are not
so much as atheists: for, though they deny two persons in the
Trinity, they hold, as we do, there is but one God.
That villain and secretary of hell, that composed that miscreant
piece of the three impostors, though divided from all religions,
and neither Jew, Turk, nor Christian, was not a positive atheist.
I confess every country hath its Machiavel, every age its Lucian,
whereof common heads must not hear, nor more advanced judg~
ments too rashly venture on. It is the rhetorick of Satan ; and may
pervert a loose or prejudicate belief.
XXI

I CONFESS I have perused them all, and can discover nothing
that may startle a discreet belief; yet are there heads carried off
xxiv

-with the wind and breath of such motives. I remember a doctor
in physick, of Italy, who could not perfectly believe the immor-
talityof the soul, because Galen seemed to make a doubt thereof.
With another I was familiarly acquainted, in France, a divine,
and a man of singular parts, that on the same point was so plunged
and gravelled with three lines of Seneca, that all our antidotes,
drawn from both Scripture and philosophy, could not expel the
poison of his error. There are a set of heads that can credit the
relations of mariners, yet question the testimonies of Saint Paul:
and peremptorily maintain the traditions of ^Elian or Pliny; yet,
in histories of Scripture, raise queries and objections : believing
no more than they can parallel in humane authors. I confess there
are, in Scripture, stories that do exceed the fables of poets, and,
to a captious reader, sound like Garagantua or Bevis. Search all
the legends of timespast,and the fabulous conceits of thesepresent,
and 'twill be hard to find one that deserves to carry the buckler
unto Sampson; yet is all this of an easy possibility, if we conceive
a divine concourse, or an influence but from the little finger of
the Almighty. It is impossible that, either in the discourse of man
or in the infallible voice of God, to the weakness of our appre-
hensions there should not appear irregularities, contradictions,
and antinomies : myself could showa catalogue of doubts, never
yet imagined nor questioned, as I know, which are not resolved
at the first hearing; not fantastick queries or objections of air; for
I cannot hear of atoms in divinity. I can read the history of the
pigeon that was sent out of the ark, and returned no more, yet not
question how she found out her mate that was left behind: that
Lazarus was raised from the dead, yet not demand where, in the
interim, his soul awaited; or raise a law-case, whether his heir
might lawfully detain his inheritance bequeathed unto him by
his death, and he, though restored to life, have no plea or title unto
his former possessions. Whether Eve was framed out of the left
side of Adam, I dispute not ; because I stand not yet assured which
is the right side of a man ; or whether there be any such distinc-
tion in nature. That she was edified out of the rib of Adam, I
believe; yet raise no question who shall arise with that rib at the
resurrection. Whether Adam was an hermaphrodite, as the Rab-
bins contend upon the letter of the text ; because it is contrary to
reason, there should be an hermaphrodite before there was a
woman,ora composition of two natures,before there was a second
composed. Likewise, whether the world was created in autumn,
summer, or the spring; because it was created in them all: for,
xxv d

whatsoever sign the sun possesseth,those four seasons are actually
existent. It is the nature of this luminary to distinguish the several
seasons of the year ; all which it makes at one time in the whole
earth, and successive in any part thereof. There are a bundle of
curiosities, not only in philosophy, but in divinity, proposed and
discussed by men of most supposed abilities, which indeed are
not worthy our vacant hours, much less our serious studies. Pieces
only fit to be placed in Pantagruel's library, or bound up with
Tartaretus, De Modo Cacandi.
XXII

TH E SE are niceties that become not those that peruse so serious
a mystery. There are others more generally questioned, and called
to the bar, yet, methinks, of an easy and possible truth.
'Tis ridiculous to put off or drown the general flood of Noah,
in that particular inundation of Deucalion. That there was a
deluge once seems not to me so great a miracle as that there is
not one always. How all the kinds of creatures, not only in their
own bulks, but with a competency of food and sustenance, might
be preserved in one ark, and within the extent of three hundred
cubits,toareasonthatrightlyexaminesit,willappearvery feasible.
There is another secret, not contained in the Scripture, which is
more hard to comprehend, and put the honest Father to the refuge
of a miracle; and that is, not only how the distinct pieces of the
world, and divided islands, should be first planted by men, but
inhabited by tigers, panthers,andbears. Ho w America abounded
with beasts of prey, and noxious animals, yet contained not in it
that necessary creature, a horse, is very strange. By what passage
those, not only birds, but dangerous and unwelcome beasts, came
over. How there be creatures there, which are not found in this
triple continent. All which must needs be strange unto us, that
hold but one ark ; and that the creatures began their progress from
the mountains of Ararat. They who, to salve this, would make
the deluge particular, proceed upon a principle that I can noway
grant ; not only upon the negative of Holy Scriptures, but of mine
own reason, whereby I can make it probable that the world was
as well peopled in the time of Noah as in ours ; and fifteen hundred
years, to people the world, as full a time for them as four thousand
years since have been to us. There are other assertions and com-
mon tenets drawn from Scripture, and generally believed as
Scripture, whereunto, notwithstanding, I would never betray
the liberty of my reason. 'Tis a postulate to me, that Methusalem
was the longest lived of all the children of Adam; and no man
xxvi

will be able to prove it; when, from the process of the text, I can
manifest it may be otherwise. That Judas perished by hanging
himself, there is no certainty in Scripture: though, in one place,
it seems to affirm it, and, by a doubtful word, hath given occasion
to translate it; yet, in another place, in a more punctual descrip-
tion, it makes it improbable, and seems to overthrow it. That
our fathers, after the flood, erected the tower of Babel, to preserve
themselves against a second deluge, is generally opinioned and
believed; yet is there another intention of theirs expressed in
Scripture. Besides, it is improbable, from the circumstance of
the place ; that is, a plain in the land of Shinar. These are no
points of faith; and therefore may admit a free dispute. There
are yet others, and those familiarly concluded from the text,
wherein (under favour) I see no consequence. The church of
Rome confidently proves the opinion of tutelary angels, from that
answer, when Peter knocked at the door, 'Tis not he, but his
angel; that is, might some say, his messenger, or somebody from
him; for so the original signifies; and is as likely to be the doubtful
family's meaning. This exposition I once suggested to a young
divine, that answered upon this point; to which I remember the
Franciscan opponent replied no more, but, that it was a new,
and no authentick interpretation.
XXIII

THESE are but the conclusions and fallible discourses of man
upon the word of God; for such I do believe the Holy Scrip-
tures; yet, were it of man, I could not choose but say, it was the
most singular and superlative piece that hath been extant since
the creation. Were I a pagan, I should not refrain the lecture of it;
and cannot but commend the judgment of Ptolemy, that thought
not his library complete without it. The Alcoran of the Turks
(I speak without prejudice) is an ill-composed piece, containing
in it vain and ridiculous errors in philosophy, impossibilities, fic-
tions, and vanities beyond laughter, maintained by evident and
open sophisms, thepolicyof ignorance, deposition of universities,
and banishment of learning. This hath gotten foot by arms and
violence: that, without a blow, hath disseminated itself through
the whole earth. It is notunremarkable, what Philo first observed,
that the lawof Moses continued two thousand years without the
least alteration; whereas, we see, the laws of other common-
wealths do alter with occasions : and even those, that pretended
their original from some divinity, to have vanished without trace
or memory. I believe, besides Zoroaster, there were divers others
xxvii

that writ before Moses ; who, notwithstanding, have suffered the
common fate of time. Men's works have an age, like themselves ;
and though they outlive their authors, yet have they a stint and
period to their duration. This only is a work too hard for the teeth
of time, and cannotperish but in the general flames, when all things
shall confess their ashes.
XXIV

I HAVE heard some with deep sighs lament the lost lines of
Cicero; others with as many groans deplore the combustion of
the library of Alexandria : for my own part, I think there be too
many in the world; and could with patience behold the urn and
ashesoftheVatican,couldI,withafewothers,recovertheperished
leaves of Solomon. I would not omit a copy of Enoch's pillars,
had they many nearer authors than Josephus, or did not relish
somewhat of the fable. Some men have written more than others
have spoken. Pineda quotes more authors, in one work,* than are
necessary in a whole world. Of those three great inventions in
Germany, there are two which are not without their incommo^
dities, and 'tis disputable whether they exceed not their use and
commodities. 'Tis not a melancholy utinam of my own, but the
desire of better heads, that there were a general synod — not to
unite the incompatible difference of religion, but, — for the
benefit of learning, to reduce it, as it lay at first, in a few and solid
authors; and to condemn to the fire those swarms and millions
of rhapsodies, begotten only to distract and abuse the weaker
judgments of scholars, and to maintain the trade and mystery of
typographers.
XXV

I CANNOT but wonder with -what exception the Samaritans
could confine their belief to the Pentateuch, or five books of
Moses. I am ashamed at the rabbinical interpretation of the Jews
upon the Old Testament, as much as their defection from the
New: and truly it is beyond wonder, how that contemptible and
degenerate issueof Jacob, oncesodevoted to ethnick superstition,
and so easily seduced to the idolatry of their neighbours, should
now, in such an obstinate and peremptory belief, adhere unto
their own doctrine, expect impossibilities, and in the face and eye
of the church, persist without the least hope of conversion. This
is a vice in them, that were a virtue in us : for obstinacy in a bad

* Pineda, in his "Monarchia Ecclesiastica," quotes one

sand and forty authors.

xxviii

cause is but constancy in a good : and herein I must accuse those
of my own religion ; for there is not any of such a fugitive faith,
suchanunstablebelief,as a Christian; none that do so often trans-
form themselves, not unto several shapes of Christianity, and of
the same species, but unto more unnatural and contrary forms of
Jew and Mahometan , that, from the name of Saviour, can descend
to the bare term of prophet: and, from an old belief that He is
come, fall to a new expectation of His coming. It is the promise
of Christ, to make us all one flock: but how and when this union
shall be, is as obscure to me as the last day. Of those four mem-
bers of religion we holdaslenderproportion. There are, I confess,
some new additions; yet small to those which accrue to our ad-
versaries; and those only drawn from the revolt of pagans; men
but of negative impieties ; and such as deny Christ, but because
they never heard or Him. But the religion of the Jew is expressly
against the Christian, and the Mahometan against both ; for the
Turk, in the bulk he now stands, is beyond all hope of conver-
sion: if he fall asunder, there maybe conceived hopes; but not
without strong improbabilities. The Jew is obstinate in all for-
tunes ; thepersecutionof fifteen hundredyears hath but confirmed
them in their error. They have already endured whatsoever may
be inflicted: and have suffered, in a bad cause, even to the con-
demnation of their enemies. Persecution is a bad and indirect
way to plant religion. It hath been the unhappy method of angry
devotions, not only to confirm honest religion, but wicked here-
sies and extravagant opinions. It was the first stone and basis of
our faith. None can more justly boast of persecutions, and glory
in the number and valour of martyrs . For, to speak properly, those
are true and almost only examples of fortitude. Those that are
fetched from the field, or drawn from the actions of the camp,
are not ofttimes so truly precedents of valour as audacity, and, at
the best, attain but to some bastard piece of fortitude. If we shall
strictly examine the circumstances and requisites which Aristotle
requires to true and perfect valour, we shall find the name only in
his master, Alexander, and as little in that Roman worthy, Julius
Caesar ; and if any, in that easy and active way, have done so nobly
as to deserve that name, yet, in the passive and more terrible piece,
these have surpassed, and in a more heroical way may claim, the
honour of that title. 'Tis not in the power of every honest faith
to proceed thus far, or pass to heaven through the flames. Every
one hath it not in that full measure, nor in so audacious and reso-
lute a temper, as to endure those terrible tests and trials; who,
xxix

notwithstanding, inapeaceable way, do truly adore their Saviour,
and have, no doubt, a faith acceptable in the eyes of God.
XXVI

NOW,asall that die in the war are not termed soldiers, so neither
can I properly term all those that suffer in matters of religion,
martyrs. The council of Constance condemns John Huss for a
heretick ; the stories of his own party style him a martyr. He must
needs offend the divinity of both, that says he was neither the one
northeother. There are many (questionless) canonized on earth,
that shall never be saints in heaven ; and have their names inhis-
tories andmartyrologies, who,in the eyes of God,are not so perfect
martyrs as was that wise heathen Socrates, that suffered on a fun-
damental point of religion, — the unity of God. I have often pitied
the miserable bishop that suffered in the cause of antipodes ; yet
cannot choose but accuse him of as much madness, for exposing
his living on such a trifle, as those of ignorance and folly, that
condemned him. I think my conscience will not give me the lie,
if I say there are not many extant, that, in a noble way, fear the
face of death less than myself; yet, from the moral duty I owe to
the commandment of God, and the natural respect that I tender
unto the conservation of my essence and being, I would not perish
upon a ceremony, politick points, or indifferency: nor is my belief
of that untractable temper, as not to bow at their obstacles, or
conniveat matters wherein there arenot manifest impieties. The
leaven, therefore, and ferment of all, not only civil, but religious,
actions, is wisdom; without which, to commit ourselves to the
flames is homicide, and (I fear) but to pass through one fire into
another.
XXVII

THAT miracles are ceased, I can neither prove nor absolutely
deny, much less define the time and period of their cessation.
That they survived Christ is manifest upon record of Scripture :
that they outlived the apostles also, and were revived at the con-
version of nations, many years after, we cannot deny, if we shall
not question those writers whose testimonies we do not con-
trovert in points that make for our own opinions: therefore, that
may have some truth in it, that is reported by the Jesuits of their
miracles in the Indies. I could wish it were true, or had any other
testimony than their own pens. They may easily believe those
miracles abroad, who daily conceive a greater at home — the trans-
mutation of those visible elements into the body and blood of
our Saviour; — for the conversion of water into wine, which He

XXX

wrought in Cana, or, what the devil would have had Him do in
the wilderness, of stones into bread, compared to this, will scarce
deserve the name of a miracle: though, indeed, to speak properly,
there is not one miracle greater than another; they being the ex-
traordinary effects of the hand of God, to which all things are of
an equal facility; and to create the world as easy as one single
creature. For this is also a miracle; not only to produce effects
against or above nature, but before nature; and to create nature,
as great a miracle as to contradict or transcend her. We do too
narrowly define thepower of God, restraining it to our capacities.
I hold that God can do all things : how He should work contra-
dictions, I do not understand, yet dare not, therefore, deny. I
cannot see why the angel of God should question Esdras to re-
call the time past, if it were beyond his own power ; or that God
should pose mortality in that -which He -was not able to perform
Himself. I will not say that God cannot, but He will not, perform
manythings,whichweplainlyaffirmHecannot. This, lam sure,
is themannerliest proposition; wherein, notwithstanding, I hold
no paradox : for, strictly, His power is the same with His will ;
and they both, with all the rest, do make but one God.
XXVIII.

THEREFORE, that miracles have been, I do believe; that they
may yet be wrought by the living, I do not deny: but have no
confidence in those which are fathered on the dead. And this
hath ever made me suspect the efficacy of relicks, to examine the
bones, question the habits and appurtenances of saints, and even
of Christ Himself. I cannot conceive why the cross that Helena
found, and whereon Christ Himself died, should have power to
restore others unto life. I excuse not Constantine from a fall off
his horse, or a mischief from his enemies, upon the wearing those
nails on his bridle which our Saviour bore upon the cross in His
hands. I compute among your piae fraudes, nor many degrees
before consecrated swords and roses, that which Baldwin, king
of Jerusalem, returned the Genoese for their costsandpainsinhis
wars ; to wit ; the ashes of John the Baptist. Those that hold the
sanctity of their souls doth leave behind a tincture and sacred
faculty on their bodies, speak naturally of miracles, and do not
salve the doubt. Now, one reason I tender so little devotion unto
relicks is, I think the slender and doubtful respect I have always
held unto antiquities. For that, indeed, which I admire, is far
before antiquity; thatis, Eternity; and that is, GodHimself; who,
though He be styled the Ancient of Days, cannot receive the
xxxi

adjunct of antiquity, who -was before the -world, and shall be
after it, yet is not older than it: for, in His years there is no
climacter : His duration is eternity ; and far more venerable than
antiquity.
XXIX

BUT, above all things, I wonder how the curiosity of wiser
heads could pass that greatand indisputable miracle, the cessation
of oracles; and in what swoon their reasons lay, to content them-
selves, and sit down with such a far-fetched and ridiculous
reason as Plutarch allegeth for it. The Jews, that can believe
the supernatural solstice of the sun in the days of Joshua, have
yet the impudence to deny the eclipse, which every pagan con-
fessed, at his death; but for this, it is evident beyond all contra-
diction: the devil himself confessed it. Certainly it is not a
warrantable curiosity, to examine the verity of Scripture by the
concordance of human history ; or seek to confirm the chronicle
of Hester or Daniel by the authority of Megasthenes or Hero-
dotus. I confess, I have had an unhappy curiosity this way, till
I laughed myself out of it with a piece of Justin, where he de-
livers that the children of Israel, for being scabbed, were
banished out of Egypt. And truly, since I have understood the
occurrences of the world, and know in what counterfeiting
shapes and deceitful visards times present represent on the stage
things past, I do believe them little more than things to come.
Some have been of my own opinion, and endeavoured to write
the history of their own lives; wherein Moses hath outgone
them all, and left not only the story of his life, but, as some will
have it, of his death also.
XXX

IT is a riddle to me, how this story of oracles hath not wormed
out of the world that doubtful conceit of spirits and witches ;
how so many learned heads should so far forget their meta-
physicks, and destroy the ladder and scale of creatures, as to
question the existence of spirits ; for my part, I have ever be-
lieved,anddo nowknow, that there are witches. They thatdoubt
of these do not only deny them, but spirits: and are obliquely,
and upon conscience, a sort, not of infidels, but atheists. Those
that, to confute their incredulity, desire to see apparitions, shall,
questionless, never behold any, nor have the power to be so
much as witches. The devil hath made them already in a heresy
as capital as witchcraft ; and to appear to them were but to con-
vert them. Of all the delusions wherewith he deceives mortality,
xxxii

there is not any that puzzleth me more than the legerdemain of
changelings. I do not credit those transformations of reasonable
creatures into beasts, or that the devil hath a power to tran-
speciate a man into a horse, who tempted Christ (as a trial of His
divinity) to convert but stones into bread, I could believe that
spirits use with man the act of carnality; and that in both sexes.
I conceive they may assume, steal, or contrive a body, wherein
there may be action enough to content decrepit lust, or passion
to satisfy more active veneries ; yet, in both, without a possi-
bility of generation : and therefore that opinion, that Anti-christ
should be born of the tribe of Dan, by conjunction with the devil,
is ridiculous, and a conceit fitter for a Rabbin than a Christian. I
hold that the devil doth really possess some men ; the spirit of
melancholy others; the spirit of delusion others : that, as the devil
is concealed and denied by some, so God and good angels are
pretended by others, whereof the late defection of the maid of
Germany** hath left a pregnant example.

AGAIN, I believe that all that use sorceries, incantations, and
spells, are not witches, or, as we term them, magicians. I con-
ceive there is a traditional magick, not learned immediately from
the devil, but at second hand from his scholars, who, having
once the secret betrayed, are able and do empirically practise
without his advice; they both proceeding upon the principles of
nature; where actives, aptly conjoined to disposed passives,
will, under any master, produce their effects, i hus, I think, at
first, a great part of philosophy was witchcraft ; which, being
afterward derived to one another, proved but philosophy, and
was indeed no more than the honest effects of nature: what
invented by us, is philosophy; learned from him, is magick. We
do surely owe the discovery of many secrets to the discovery of
good and bad angels. I could never pass that sentence of
Paracelsus without an asterisk, or annotation: ascendens constel-
latum multa revelat quaerentibus magnalia naturae, i.e., opera
Dei. I do think that many mysteries ascribed to our own inven-
tions have been the courteous revelations of spirits; for those
noble essences in heaven bear a friendly regard unto their fellow-
natures on earth; and therefore believe that those many prodigies
and ominous prognosticks, which forerun the ruins of states,
princes, and private persons, are the charitable premonitions of

* That lived, without meat, on the smell of a rose.
xxxiii

good angels, which more careless inquiries term but the effects
of chance and nature.
XXXII

NOW, besides these particular and divided spirits, there may
be (for aught I know) an universal and common spirit to the
whole world. It was the opinion of Plato, and it is yet of the
hermetical philosophers. If there be a common nature, that unites
and ties the scattered and divided individuals into one species,
why may there not be one that unites them all t However, I am
sure there is a common spirit, that plays within us, yet makes no
part of us ; and that is, the spirit of God; the fire and scintillation
of that noble and mighty essence, which is the life and radical
heat of spirits, and those essences that know not the virtue of the
sun; a fire quite contrary to the fire of hell. This is that gentle
heat that brooded on the waters, and in six days hatched the
world ; this is that irradiation that dispels the mists of hell, the
clouds of horror, fear, sorrow, despair; and preserves the region
of the mind in serenity. Whosoever feels not the warm gale and
gentle ventilation of this spirit, (though I feel his pulse) I dare not

say he lives ; for truly without this, to me, there is no heat under
the tropick ; nor any light, though I dwelt in the body of the sun.

"S^fr As when the labouring sun hath wrought his track

Up to the top of lofty Cancer's back,

The icy ocean cracks, the frozen pole

Thaws with the heat of the celestial coal ;

So when Thy absent beams begin t' impart

Again a solstice on my frozen heart,

My winter ' s o'er, my drooping spirits sing,

And every part revives into a spring.

But if Thy quickening beams awhile decline,

And with their light bless not this orb of mine,

A chilly frost surpriseth every member,

And in the midst of June I feel December.

Or how this earthly temper doth debase

The noble soul, in this her humble place !

Whose wingy nature ever doth aspire

To reach that place whence first it took its fire.

These flames I feel, which in my heart do dwell,

Are not Thy beams, but take their fire from hell.

O quench them all ! and let Thy Light divine

Be as the sun to this poor orb of mine !

xxxiv

And to Thy sacred Spirit convert those fires,
Whose earthly fumes choke my devout aspires !
XXXIII

THEREFORE, for spirits, I am so far from denying their exist-
ence, that I could easily believe, that not only whole countries,
but particular persons, have their tutelary and guardian angels.
It is not a new opinion of the Church of Rome, but an old one
of Pythagoras and Plato : there is no heresy in it : and if not mani-
festly defined in Scripture, yet it is an opinion of a good and
wholesome use in the course and actions of a man's life ; and
would serve as an hypothesis to salve many doubts, whereof
common philosophy affordeth no solution. Now, if you demand
my opinion and metaphysicks of their natures, I confess them
very shallow; most of them in a negative way, like that of God ;
or in a comparative, between ourselves and fellow-creatures :
for there is in this universe a stair, or manifest scale, of creatures,
rising not disorderly, or in confusion, but with a comely method
and proportion. Between creatures of mere existenceand things
of life there is a large disproportion of nature : between plants
and animals, or creatures of sense, a wider difference: between
them and man, a far greater : and if the proportion hold on, be-
tween man and angels there should be yet a greater. We do not
comprehend their natures, who retain the first definition of Por-
phyry ;* and distinguish them from ourselves by immortality:
for, before his fall, man also was immortal : yet must we needs
affirm that he had a different essence from the angels. Having,
therefore, no certain knowledge of their nature, 'tis no bad method
of the schools, whatsoever perfection we find obscurely in our
selves, in a more complete and absolute way to ascribe unto
them. I believe they have an extemporary knowledge, and, upon
the first motion of their reason, do what we cannot without study
or deliberation: that they know things by their forms, and define,
by specifical difference, what we describe by accidents and pro-
perties : and therefore probabilities to us may be demonstrations
unto them : that they have knowledge not only of the specifical,
but numerical, forms of individuals, and understand by what re-
served difference each single hypostasis (besides relation to its
species) becomes its numerical self: that, as the soul hath apower
to move the body it informs, so there's a faculty to move any,
though inform none: ours upon restraint of time, place, and dis-

* Essentiae rationalis immortalis.

XXXV

'. • - •-••

tancc : but that invisible hand that conveyed Habakkuk to the
lion's den,or Philip to Azotus, infringeth this rule, and hath a secret
conveyance, wherewith mortality is not acquainted. If they have
that intuitive knowledge, whereby, as in reflection, they behold
the thoughts of one another, I cannot peremptorily deny but they
know a great part of ours. They that, to refute the invocation of
saints, have denied that they have any knowledge of our affairs
below, have proceeded too far, and must pardon my opinion,
till I can thoroughly answer that piece of Scripture, " Atthecon-
version of a sinner, the angels in heaven rejoice." I cannot, with
those in that great father, securely interpret the work of the first
day, fiat lux, to the creation of angels ; though I confess there is
not any creature that hath so near a glimpse of their nature as light
in the sun and elements : we style it a bare accident ; but, where
it subsists alone, 'tis a spiritual substance, and may be an angel :
in brief, conceive light invisible, and that is a spirit.
XXXIV

THESE are certainly the magisterial and masterpieces of the
Creator; the flower, or, as we may say, the best part of nothing ;
actually existing, what we are but in hopes, and probability. We
are only that amphibious piece, between a corporeal and a spi-
ritual essence; that middle form, that links those two together,
and makes good the method of God and nature, that jumps not
from extremes, but unites the incompatible distances by some
middle and participating natures. That we are the breath and
similitude of God, it is indisputable, and upon record of Holy
Scripture : but to call ourselves a microcosm, or little world, I
thought it only a pleasant trope of rhetorick, till my near judg-
ment and second thoughts told me there was a real truth therein.
For, first we are a rude mass, and in the rank of creatures which
only are, and have a dull kind of being, not yet privileged with
life, or preferred to sense or reason ; next we live the life of plants,
the life of animals, the life of men, and at last the life of spirits:
running on, in one mysterious nature, those five kinds of exist-
ences, which comprehend the creatures, not only the world, but
of the universe. Thus is man that great and true amphibium,
whose nature is disposed to live, not only like other creatures in
divers elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds; for
though there be but one to sense, there are two to reason, the one
visible, the other invisible; whereof Moses seems to have left
description, and of the other so obscurely, that some parts thereof
are yet in controversy. And truly, for the first chapters of Gene-
xxxvi

sis, I must confess a great deal of obscurity; though divines have,
to the power of human reason, endeavoured to make all go in a
literal meaning, yet those allegorical interpretations are alsopro-
bable, and perhaps the mystical method of Moses, bred up in
the hieroglyphical schools of the Egyptians.
XXXV

NOW for that immaterial world, methinks we need not wander
so far as the first moveable ; for, even in this material fabrick, the
spirits walk as freely exempt from the affection of time, place,
and motion, as beyond the extremest circumference. Do but
extract from the corpulency of bodies, or resolve things beyond
their first matter, andy ou discover the habitation of angels ; which
if I call the ubiquitary and omnipresent essence of God, I hope
I shall not offend divinity : for, before the creation of the world,
God was really all things. For the angels, He created no new
world, or determinate mansion, and therefore they are every-
where where is His essence, and do live, at a distance even, in
Himself. That God made all things for man, is in some sense
true; yet, not so far as to subordinate the creation of those purer
creatures unto ours ; though, as ministering spirits, they do, and
are willing to fulfil the will of God in these lower and sublunary
affairs of man. God made all things for Himself; and it is impos-
sible He should make them for any other end than His own glory:
it is all He can receive, andall thatis without Himself. For, honour
being an external adjunct, and in the honourer rather than in the
person honoured, it was necessary to make a creature, from whom
He might receive this homage: and that is, in the other world,
angels, in this, man ; which when we neglect, we forget the very
end of our creation, and may justly provoke God, not only to
repent that He hath made the world, but that He hath sworn He
would not destroy it. That there is but one world, is a conclusion
of faith; Aristotle with all his philosophy hath not been able to
prove it : and as weakly that the world was eternal; that dispute
much troubled the pen of the ancient philosophers, but Moses
decided that question, and all is salved with the new term of a
creation, — that is, a production of something out of nothing.
And what is that.'' — whatsoever is opposite to something; or,
more exactly, that which is truly contrary unto God: for He only
is; all others have an existence with dependency, and are some-
thing but by a distinction. And herein is divinity conformant
unto philosophy, and not only generation founded on contrarie-
ties, out also creation. God, being all things, is contrary unto
xxxvii

nothing; out of which were made all things, and so nothing be-
came something, and omneity informed nullity into an essence.
XXXVI

THE whole creation is a mystery, and particularly that of man.
At the blast of His mouth were the rest of the creatures made ;
and at His bare word they started out of nothing : but in the frame
of man (as the text describes it) He played the sensible operator,
and seemed not so much to create as make him. When He had
separated the materials of other creatures, there consequently re-
sulted a form and soul; but, having raised the walls of man, He
was driven to a second and harder creation, — of a substance
like Himself, an incorruptible and immortal soul. For these two
affections we have the philosophy and opinion of the heathens,
the flat affirmative of rlato, and not a negative from Aristotle.
There is another scruple cast in by divinity concerning its pro-
duction, much disputed in the German auditories, and with that
indifferency and equality of arguments, as leave the controversy
undetermined. I am not of Paracelsus's mind, that boldly de-
livers a receipt to make a man without conjunction; yet cannot
but wonder at the multitude of heads that do deny traduction,
having no other argument to confirm their belief than that rhe-
torical sentence and antimetathesis* of Augustine, creando in-
funditur, infundendo creatur. Either opinion will consist well
enough -with religion: yet I should rather incline to this, did not
one objection haunt me, not wrung from speculations and subtle-
ties, but from common sense and observation; not pick'd from
the leaves of any author, but bred amongst the weeds and tares
of my own brain. And this is a conclusion from the equivocal
and monstrous productions in the copulation of a man with a
beast : for if the soul of man be not transmitted and transfused in
the seed of the parents, why are not those productions merely
beasts, but have also an impression and tincture of reason in as
high a measure, as it can evidence itself in those improper organs S
Nor, truly, can I peremptorily deny that the soul, in this her sub-
lunary estate, is wholly, and in all acceptions, inorganical: but
that, for the performance of her ordinary actions, there is required
not only a symmetry and proper disposition of organs, but a
crasis and temper correspondent to its operations; yet is not this
mass of flesh and visible structure the instrument and proper

* Antanaclasis. — A figure in rhetoric, where one word is in-
serted upon another,
xxxviii

corpse of the soul, but rather of sense, and that the hand of reason.
In our study of anatomy there is a mass of mysterious philosophy,
and such as reduced the very heathens to divinity; yet, amongst
all those rare discoveries and curious pieces I find in the fabrick
of man, I do not so much content myself, as in that I find not, —
that is, no organ or instrument for the rational soul; for in the
brain, which we term the seat of reason, there is not anything of
moment more than I can discover in the crany of a beast : and
this is a sensible and no inconsiderable argument of the in-
organity of the soul, at least in that sense we usually so receive
it. Thus we are men, and we know not how; there is something
in us that can be without us, and will be after us, though it is
strange that it hath no history what it was before us, nor cannot
tell how it entered in us.
XXXVII

NOW, for these walls of flesh, wherein the soul doth seem to be
immured before the resurrection, it is nothing but an elemental
composition, and a fabrick that must fall to ashes. "All flesh is
grass," is not only metaphorically, but literally, true; for all those
creatures we behold are but the herbs of the field, digested into
flesh in them, or more remotely carnified in ourselves. Nay,
further, we are what we all abhor, anthropophagi, and cannibals,
devourers not only of men, but of ourselves ; and that not in an
allegory but a positive truth: for all this mass of flesh which we
behold, came in at our mouths : this frame we look upon, hath
been our trenchers; in brief, we have devoured ourselves. I can-
not believe the wisdom of Pythagoras did ever positively, and
in a literal sense, affirm his metempsychosis, or impossible trans-
migration of the souls of men into beasts. Of all metamorphoses
or transmigrations, I believe only one, that is of Lot's wife; for
that of Nabuchodonosor proceeded not so far. In all others I
conceive there is no further verity than is contained in their im-
plicit sense and morality. I believe that the whole frame of a
beast doth perish, and is left in the same state after death as be-
fore it was materialed unto life: that the souls of men know-
neither contrary nor corruption; that they subsist beyond the
body, and outlive death by the privilege of their proper natures,
and without a miracle: that the souls of the faithful, as they leave
earth, take possession of heaven ; that those apparitions and
ghosts of departed persons are not the wandering souls of men,
but the unquiet walks of devils, prompting and suggesting us
unto mischief, blood, andvillany; instilling and stealing into our
xxxix

hearts that the blessed spirits are not at rest in their graves, but
wander, solicitous of the affairs of the world. But that those
phantasms appear often, and do frequent cemeteries, charnel-
houses, and churches, it is because those are the dormitories of
the dead, where the devil, like an insolent champion, beholds
with pride the spoils and trophies of his victory over Adam.
XXXVIII

THIS is that dismal conquest we all deplore, that makes us so
often cry, O Adam, quid fecisti t I thank God I have not those
strait ligaments, or narrow obligations to the world, as to dote on
life, or be convulsed and tremble at the name of death. Not that
I am insensible of the dread and horror thereof; or, by raking into
the bowels of the deceased, continual sight of anatomies, skele-
tons, or cadaverous relicks, like vespilloes, or gravemakers, I am
become stupid, or have forgot the apprehension of mortality; but
that, marshalling all the horrors, and contemplating the extremi-
ties thereof, I find not anything therein able to daunt the courage
of a man, much less a well-resolved Christian ; and therefore am
not angry at the error of our first parents, or unwilling to bear a
part of this common fate, and, like the best of them, to die; that
is, to cease to breathe, to take a farewell of the elements; to be a
kind of nothing for a moment ; to be within one instant of a spirit.
When I take a full view and circle of myself without this reason-
able moderator, and equal piece of justice, death, I do conceive
myself the miserablest person extant. Were there not another life
that I hope for, all the vanities of this world should not entreat a
moment's breath from me. Could the devil work my belief to
imagine I could never die, I would not outlive that very thought.
I have so abject a conceit of this common way of existence, this
retaining to the sun and elements, I cannot think this is to be a
man, or to live according to the dignity of humanity. In expecta-
tion of a better, I can with patience embrace this life; yet, in my
best meditations, do often defy death. I honour any man that
contemns it; nor can I highly love any that is afraid of it: this
makes me naturally love a soldier, and honour those tattered and
contemptibleregiments,thatwilldieatthecommandofasergeant.
For a pagan there may be some motives to be in love with life ;
but, for a Christian to be amazed at death, I see not how he can
escape this dilemma — that heis too sensible of thislife, or hopeless
of the life to come.
XXXIX

SOME divines count Adam thirty years old at his creation, be-
xl

cause they suppose him created in the perfect age and stature of
man: and surely we are all out of the computation of our age;
and every man is some months older than he bethinks him; for
we live, move, have a being, and are subject to the actions of the
elements, and the malice of diseases, in that other world, the
truest microcosm, the womb of our mother; for besides that
general and common existence we are conceived to hold in our
chaos, and whilst we sleep within the bosom of our causes, -we
enjoy a being and life in three distinct worlds, wherein we re*-
ceive most manifest gradations. In that obscure world, the womb
of our mother, our time is short, computed by the moon ; yet longer
than the days of many creatures that behold the sun ; ourselves
being not yet without life, sense, and reason; though, for the
manifestation of its actions, it awaits the opportunity of objects,
and seems to live there but in its root and soul of vegetation.
Entering afterwards upon the scene of the world, we rise up and
become another creature; performing the reasonable actions of
man, and obscurely manifesting that part of divinity in us, but
not in complement and perfection, till we have once more cast
our secundme, that is, this slough of flesh, and are delivered into
the last world, that is, that ineffable place of Paul, that proper
ubi of spirits. The smattering I have of the philosophers' stone
(which is something more than the perfect exaltation of gold)
hath taught me a great deal of divinity, and instructed my belief,
how that immortal spirit and incorruptible substance of my soul
may lie obscure, and sleep awhile within this house of flesh.
Those strange and mystical transmigrations that I have observed
in silkworms turned my philosophy into divinity. There is in
these works of nature, which seem to puzzle reason, something
divine ; and hath more in it than the eye of a common spectator
doth discover.
XL

I AM naturally bashful ; nor hath conversation , age, or travel, been
able to effront or enharden me ; yet I have one part of modesty,
which I have seldom discovered in another, that is (to speak
truly), I am not so much afraid of death as ashamed thereof; 'tis
the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures, that in a moment
can so disfigure us, that our nearest friends, wife, and children,
stand afraid, and start at us. The birds and beasts of the field, that
before, in a natural fear, obeyed us, forgetting all allegiance, begin
to prey upon us. This very conceit hath, in a tempest, disposed
and left me willing to be swallowed up in the abyss of waters,
xli f

wherein I had perished unseen, unpitied, without wondering
eyes, tears of pity , lectures of mortality, and none had saidjQuan-
tum mutatus ab illo ! Not that I am ashamed of the anatomy of
my parts, or can accuse nature of playing the bungler in any part
of me, or my own vicious lifefor contracting any shameful disease
upon me, whereby I might not call myself as wholesome amorsel
for the worms as any.
XLI

SOME, upon the courage of a fruitful issue, wherein, as in the
truest chronicle, they seem to outlive themselves, can with greater
patience away with death. This conceit and counterfeit subsist-
ing in our progenies seems to me a mere fallacy, unworthy the
desires of a man, that can but conceive a thought of the next
world; who, in a nobler ambition, should desire to live in his
substance in heaven, rather than his name and shadow in the
earth. And therefore, at my death, I mean to take a total adieu of
the world, not caring for a monument, history, or epitaph ; not so
much as the bare memory of my name to be found any where, but
in the universal register of God. I am not yet so cynical, as to
approve the testament of Diogenes,* nor do I altogether allow
that rodomontade of Lucan;
>4&Caelo tegitur, qui non habet urnam.
He that unburied lies wants not his hearse;
For unto him a tomb 's the universe.

but commend, in my calmer judgment, those ingenuous inten-
tions that desire to sleep by the urns of their fathers, and strive to
go the neatest way unto corruption. I do not envy the temper of
crows and daws, nor the numerous and weary days of our fathers
before the flood. If there be any truth in astrology, I may outlive
a jubilee; as yet I have not seen one revolution of Saturn,** nor
hath my pulse beat thirty years, and yet, excepting one, have seen
the ashes of, and left under ground, all the kings of Europe ; have
been contemporary to three emperors, four grand signiors, and
as many popes: methinks I have outlived my self, and begin to be
weary or the sun; I have shaken hands with delight in my warm
blood and canicular days ; I perceive I do anticipate the vices of
age; the world to me is but a dream or mock-show, and we all
therein but pantaloons and anticks , to my severer contemplations.

* Who willed his friend not to bury him, but to hang him up

with a staff in his hand, to fright away the crows.

** The planet Saturn maketh his revolution once in 30 years.

xlii

XLII

IT is not, I confess, an unlawful prayer to desire to surpass the
days of ourSaviour,or wish to outlive thatagewhereinHe thought
fittest to die; yet, if (as divinity affirms) there shall be no grey
hairs in heaven, but all shall rise in the perfect state of men, we
do but outlive those perfections in this world, to be recalled unto
them by a greater miracle in the next, and run on here but to be
retrograde hereafter. Were there any hopes to outlive vice, or a
point to be superannuated from sin, it were worthy our knees to
implore the days of Methuselah. But age doth not rectify, but
incurvate our natures, turningbad dispositions into worser habits,
and (like diseases) brings on incurable vices; for every day, as we
grow weaker in age, we grow stronger in sin, and the number of
our days doth but make our sins innumerable. The same vice,
committed at sixteen, is not the same, though it agrees in all other
circumstances, at forty; but swells and doubles from the circum-
stance of our ages, wherein, besides the constant and inexcusable
habit of transgressing, the maturity of our judgment cuts off pre-
tence unto excuse or pardon. Every sin, the oftener it is com-
mitted, the more it acquireth in the quality of evil ; as it succeeds
in time, so it proceeds in degrees of badness; for as they proceed
they ever multiply, and, like figures in arithmetick,the last stands
for more than all that went before it. And, though I think no man
can live well once, but he that could live twice, yet, for my own
part, I would not live over my hours past, or begin again the
thread of my days; not upon Cicero's ground, because I have
lived them well, tut for fear I should live them worse. I find my
growing-judgment daily instruct me how to be better, but my un-
tamed affections and confirmed vitiosity make me daily do worse.
I find in my confirmed age the same sins I discovered in my
youth; I committed many then because I was a child; and, be-
cause I commit them still, I am yet an infant. Therefore I per-
ceive a man may be twice a child, before the days of dotage ; and
stand in need of ^E son's bath before threescore.
XLIII

AND truly there goes a deal of providence to produce a man's
life unto threescore; there is more required than an able temper
for those years: though the radical humour contain in it sufficient
oil for seventy, yet I perceive in some it gives no light past thirty:
men assign not all the causes of long life, that write whole books
thereof. They that found themselves on the radical balsam, or
vital sulphur of the parts, determine not why Abel lived not so
xliii

long as Adam. There is therefore a secret gloom or bottom of
our days: 'twas his wisdom to determine them: but his perpetual
and waking providence that fulfils and accomplisheth them;
wherein the spirits, ourselves, and all the creatures of God, in a
secret and disputed way, do execute his will. Let themnotthere-
fore complain of immaturity that die about thirty: they fall but
like the whole world, whose solid and well-composed substance
must not expect the duration and period of its constitution: when
all things are completed in it, its age is accomplished; and the
last and general fever mayas naturally destroy it before six thous-
and, as me before forty, T here is therefore some other hand that
twines the thread of life than that of nature : we are not only ig-
norant in antipathies and occult qualities; our ends are as obscure
as our beginnings; the line of our days is drawn by night, and
the various effects therein by a pencil that is invisible; wherein,
though we confess our ignorance, I am sure we do not err if we
say, it is the hand of God.
XLIV

I AM much taken with two verses of Lucan, since I have been
able not only, as we do at school, to construe, but understand:
"d^jfr Victurosque Dei celant, ut vivere durent,
Felix esse mori.

We're all deluded, vainly searching ways
To make us happy by the length of days;
For cunningly, to make 's protract this breath,
The gods conceal the happiness of death.

There be many excellent strains in that poet, wherewith his
stoical genius hath liberally supplied him: and truly there are
singular pieces in the philosophy of Zeno, and doctrine of the
stoics, which I perceive, delivered in a pulpit, pass for current
divinity: yet herein are they in extremes, that can allow a man to
be his own assassin, and so highly extol the end and suicide of
Cato. This is indeed not to fear death, but yet to be afraid of life.
It is a brave act of valour to contemn death ; but, where life is
more terrible than death, it is then the truest valour to dare to
live: and herein religion hath taught us a noble example; for all
the valiant acts of Curtius, Scaevola, or Codrus, do not parallel,
or match, that one of Job ; and sure there is no torture to the rack
of a disease, nor any poniards in death itself, like those in the way
or prologue unto it. Emori nolo,sed me esse mortuumnihil euro;
I would not die, but care not to be dead. Were I of Caesar's re-
ligion, I should be of his desires, and wish rather to go off at one
xliv

blow, than to be sawed in pieces by the grating torture of a disease.
Men that look no further than their outsides,thmk health an appur-
tenance unto life, and quarrel with their constitutions for being
sick ; but I, that have examined the parts of man, and know upon
what tender filaments that fabrick hangs, do wonder that we are
not always so ; and, considering the thousand doors that lead to
death, do thank my God that we can die but once. 'Tis not only
the mischief of diseases, and the villainy of poisons, that make
an end of us ; we vainly accuse the fury of guns, and the new inven-
tions of death : — it is in the power of every hand to destroy us,
and we are beholden unto every one we meet, he doth not kill
us. There is therefore but one comfort left, that, though it be in
the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the
strongest to deprive us of death. God would not exempt Himself
from that; the misery of immortality in the flesh He undertook not,
that was in it, immortal. Certainly there is no happiness within
this circle of flesh; nor is it in the opticks of these eyes to behold
felicity. The first day of our jubilee is death; the devil hath there-
fore failed of his desires; we are happier with death than we should
have been without it: there is no misery but in himself, where
there is no end of misery; and so indeed, in his own sense, the
stoic is in the right. He forgets that he can die, who complains
of misery: we are in the power of no calamity while death is in
our own.
XLV

NOW, besides this literal and positive kind of death, there are
others whereof divines make mention, and those, I think, not
merely metaphorical, as mortification, dying unto sin and the
world. Therefore, I say, every man hath a double horoscope ;
one of his humanity, — his birth, another of his Christianity, —
his baptism: and from this do I compute or calculate my nativity ;
notreckoning those horse combustae,and odd days, or esteeming
myself anything, before I was my Saviour's and enrolled in the
register of Christ. Whosoever enjoys not this life, I count him
but an apparition, though he wear about him the sensible affec-
tions of flesh. In these moral acceptions,the way to be immortal
is to die daily; nor can I think I have the true theory of death,
when I contemplate a skull or behold a skeleton with those vulgar
imaginations it casts upon us. I have therefore enlarged that com-
mon memento mori into a more Christian memorandum, me-
mento quatuor novissima, — those four inevitable points of us
all, death, judgment, heaven, and hell. Neither did the contem-
xlv

plations of the heathens rest in their graves, without a further
thought, of Rhadamanth or some judicial proceeding afterdeath,
though in another way, and upon suggestion of their natural rea~
sons. I cannot butmarvel from what sibyl or oracle they stole the
prophecy of the world's destruction by fire, or whence Lucan
learned to say,
^^Communis mundo superest rogus, ossibus astra

Misturus

There yet remains to th' world one common fire,
Wherein our bones with stars shall make one pyre.
I believe the world grows near its end; yet is neither old nor
decayed, nor shall ever perish upon the ruins of its own principles.
As the work of creation was above nature, so is its adversary,
annihilation ; without -which the world hath not its end, but its
mutation. Now, what force should be able to consume it thus far,
without the breath of God, which is the truest consuming flame,
my philosophy cannot inform me. Some believe there went not
a minute to the world's creation, nor shall there go to its destruC"
tion; those six days, so punctually described, make not to them
one moment, but rather seem to manifest the method and idea
of that great work of the intellect of God than the manner how
He proceeded in its operation. I cannot dream that there should
be at the last day any such judicial proceeding, or calling to the
bar, as indeed the Scripture seems to imply, and the literal com~
mentators do conceive: for unspeakable mysteries in the Scrip"
tures are often delivered in a vulgar and illustrative way, and,
being written unto man, are delivered, not as they truly are, but
as they may be understood; wherein, notwithstanding, the dif"
ferent interpretations according to different capacities may stand
firm with our devotion, nor be any way prejudicial to each single
edification.
XLVI

NOW, to determine the day and year of this inevitable time, is
not only convincible and statute madness, but also manifest im"
piety. How shall we interpret Elias's six thousand years, or
imagine the secret communicated to a Rabbi which God hath
denied unto His angels J It had been an excellent quxre to have
posed the devil of Delphos, and must needs have forced him to
some strange amphibology. It hath not only mocked the pre^
dictions of sundry astrologers in ages past, but the prophecies
of many melancholy heads in these present; who, neither under^
standing reasonably things past nor present, pretend a knowledge
xlvi

of things to come; heads ordained only to manifest the incredible
effects of melancholy, and to fulfil old prophecies, rather than be
the authors of new. " In those days there shall come wars and
rumours of wars" to me seems no prophecy, but a constant truth
in all times verified since it was pronounced. "There shall be
signs in the moon and stars;" how comes He then like a thief in
the night, when He gives an item of His coming t That common
sign, drawn from the revelation of Antichrist, is as obscure as any ;
in our common compute he hath been come these many years ;
but, for my own part, to speak freely, I am half of opinion that
Antichrist is the philosopher's stone in divinity, for the discovery
and invention whereof, though there be prescribed rules, and
probable inductions, yet hath hardly any man attained theperfect
discovery thereof. That general opinion, that the world grows
near its end, hath possessed all ages past as nearly as ours. I am
afraid that the souls that now depart cannot escape that lingering
expostulation of the saints under the altar, quousque, Domine.^
how long, O Lord J and groan in the expectation of the great
jubilee.
XLVII

THIS is the day that must make good that great attribute of
God, His justice; that must reconcile those unanswerable doubts
that torment the wisest understandings; and reduce those seem-
ing inequalities and respective distributions in this world, to an
equality and recompensive justice in the next. This is that one
day, that shall include and comprehend all that went before it ;
wherein, as in the last scene, all the actors must enter, to complete
and make up the catastrophe of this great piece. This is the day
whose memory hath, only, power to make us honest in the dark,
and to be virtuous without a witness. Ipsa sui pretium virtus
sibi, that virtue is her own reward, is but a cold principle, and
not able to maintain our variable resolutions in a constant and
settled way of goodness. I have practised that honest artifice of
Seneca, and, in my retired and solitary imaginations to detain me
from the foulness of vice, have fancied to myself the presence of
my dear and worthiest friends, before whom I should lose my
head rather than be vicious ; yet herein I found that there was
nought but moral honesty; and this was not to be virtuous for
His sake who must reward us at the last, I have tried if I could
reach that great resolution of his, to be honest without a thought
of heaven or hell ; and, indeed I found, upon a natural inclination,
and inbred loyalty unto virtue, that I could serve her without a
xlvii

livery, yet not in that resolved and venerable way, but that the
frailty of my nature, upon an easy temptation, might be induced
to forget her. The life, therefore, and spirit of all our actions is
the resurrection, and a stable apprehension that our ashes shall
enjoy the fruit of our pious endeavours; without this, all religion
is a fallacy, and those impieties of Lucian, Euripides, and Julian,
are no blasphemies, but subtile verities; and atheists have been
the only philosophers.
XLVIII

HOW shall the dead arise, is no question of my faith; to believe
only possibilities is not faith, but mere philosophy. Many things
are true in divinity, which are neither inducible by reason nor
confirmable by sense ; and many things in philosophy confirm-
able by sense, yet not inducible by reason. Thus it is impossible,
by any solid or demonstrative reasons, to persuade a man to be-
lieve the conversion of the needle to the north; though this be
possible and true, and easy credible, upon a single experiment
unto the sense. I believe that our estranged and divided ashes
shall unite again ; that our separated dust, after so many pilgrim-
ages and transformations into the parts of minerals, plants, ani-
mals, elements, shall, at the voice of God, return into their
primitive shapes, and join again to make up their primary and
predestinate forms. As at the creation there was a separation of
that confused mass into its species ; so at the destruction thereof
there shall be a separation into its distinct individuals. As, at the
creation of the world, all the distinct species that we behold lay
involved in one mass, till the fruitful voice of God separated this
united multitude into its several species, so, at the last day,»when
those corrupted relicks shall be scattered in the wilderness of
forms, and seem to have forgot their proper habits, God, by a
powerful voice, shall command them back into their proper
shapes, and call them out by their single individuals. Then shall
appear the fertility of Adam, and the magick of that sperm that
hath dilated into so many millions. I have often beheld, as a
miracle, that artificial resurrection and revivification of mercury,
how being mortified into a thousand shapes, it assumes again
its own, and returns into its numerical self. Let us speak natur-
ally, and like philosophers. The forms of alterable bodies in
these sensible corruptions perish not; nor, as we imagine, wholly
quit their mansions; but retire and contract themselves into their
secret and unaccessible parts; where they may best protect them-
selves from the action of their antagonist. A plant or vegetable
xlviii

consumed to ashes to a contemplative and school'-philosopher
seems utterly destroyed, and the form to have taken his leave
for ever; but to a sensible artist the forms are not perished, but
withdrawn into their incombustible part, where they lie secure
from the action of that devouring element. This is made good
by experience, which can from the ashes of a plant revive the
plant, and from its cinders recall it into its stalk and leaves again.
What the art of man can do in these inferior pieces, what blas~
phemy is it to affirm the finger of God cannot do in those more
perfect and sensible structures.^ This is that mystical philosophy,
from whence no true scholar becomes an atheist, but from the
visible effects of nature grows up a real divine, and beholds not
in a dream, as Ezekiel, but in an ocular and visible object, the
types of his resurrection.

NOW, the necessary mansions of our restored selves are those
two contrary and incompatible places we call heaven and hell.
To define them, or strictly to determine what and where these
are, surpasseth my divinity. That elegant apostle, which seemed
to have a glimpse of heaven, hath left but a negative description
thereof; which neither eye hath seen, nor ear hath heard, nor
can enter into the heart of man: he was translated out of himself
to behold it; but, being returned into himself, could not express
it. Saint John's description by emeralds, chrysolites, and pre*-
cious stones, is too weak to express the material heaven we be'-
hold. Briefly, therefore, where the soul hath the full measure and
complement of happiness; where the boundless appetite of that
spirit remains completely satisfied that it can neither desire ad~
dition nor alteration ; that, I think, is truly heaven : and this can
only be in the enjoyment of that essence, whose infinite good'-
ness is able to terminate the desires of itself, and the unsatiable
wishes of ours. Wherever God will thus manifest Himself, there
is heaven, though within the circle of this sensible world. Thus,
the soul of man may be in heaven anywhere, even within the
limits of his own proper body; and when it ceaseth to live in the
body it may remain in its own soul, that is, its Creator. And thus
we may say that Saint Paul, whether in the body or out of the
body, was yet in heaven. To place it in the empyreal, or beyond
the tenth sphere, is to forget the world's destruction; for when
this sensible world shall be destroyed, all shall then be here as
it is now there, an empyreal heaven, a quasi vacuity; when to
ask where heaven is, is to demand where the presence of God
xlix g

is, or where we have the glory of that happy vision. Moses, that
was bred up in all the learning of the Egyptians, committed a
gross absurdity in philosophy, when with these eyes of flesh he
desired to see God, and petitioned his Maker, that is truth itself,
to a contradiction. Those that imagine heaven and hell neigh-
bours, and conceive a vicinity between those two extremes, upon
consequence of the parable, where Dives discoursed with Laza-
rus, in Abraham's bosom, do too grossly conceive of those glori-
fied creatures, whose eyes shall easily out-see the sun, and behold
without perspective the extremest distances: for if there shall be,
in our glorified eyes, the faculty of sight and reception of objects,
I could think the visible species there to be in as unlimitable a
way as now the intellectual. I grant that two bodies placed be-
yond the tenth sphere, or in a vacuity, according to Aristotle's
philosophy, could not behold each other, because there wants a
body or medium to hand and transport the visible rays of the ob-
ject unto the sense; but when there shall be a general defect of
either medium to convey, or light to prepare and dispose that
medium, and yet a perfect vision, we must suspend the rules of
our philosophy, and make all good by a more absolute piece of
opticks.

JL/

I CANNOT tell how to say that fire is the essence of hell; I
know not what to make of purgatory, or conceive a flame that
can either prey upon, or purify the substance of a soul. Those
flames of sulphur, mentioned in the scriptures, I take not to be
understood of this present hell, but of that to come, where fire
shall make up the complement of our tortures, and have a body
or subject whereon to manifest its tyranny. Some who have had
the honour to be textuaryin divinity are of opinion it shall be the
same specifical fire with ours. This is hard to conceive, yet can
I make good how even that may prey upon our bodies, and yet
not consume us: for in this material world, there are bodies that
persist invincible in the powerfulest flames; and though, by the
action of fire, they fall into ignition and liquation, yet will they
never suffer a destruction. I would gladly know how Moses,
with an actual fire, calcined or burnt the golden calf into pow-
der: for that mystical metal of gold, whose solary and celestial
nature I admire, exposed unto the violence of fire, grows only
hot, and liquefies, but consumeth not; so when the consumable
and volatile pieces of our bodies shall be refined into a more im-
pregnable and fixed temper, like gold, though they suffer from
1

the action of flames, they shall never perish, but lie immortal in
the arms of fire. And surely, if this frame must suffer only by the
action of this element, there will many bodies escape ; and not
only heaven, but earth will not be at an end, but rather a begin-
ning. For at present it is not earth, but a composition of fire,
water, earth, and air ; but at that time, spoiled of these ingredients,
it shall appear in a substance more like itself, its ashes. Philoso-
phers that opinioned the -world's destruction by fire, did never
dream of annihilation, which is beyond the power of sublunary
causes; for the last and proper action of that element is but vitri-
fication, or a reduction of a body into glass; and therefore some
of our chymicks facetiously affirm, that, at the last fire, all shall
be crystalized and reverberated into glass, which is the utmost
action of that element. Nor need we fear this term, annihilation,
or wonder that God will destroy the works of his creation: for
man subsisting, who is, and will then truly appear, a microcosm,
the world cannot be said to be destroyed. For the eyes of God,
and perhaps also of our glorified selves, shall as really behold
and contemplate the world, in its epitome or contracted essence,
as now it doth at large and in its dilated substance. In the seed
of a plant, to the eyes of God, and to the understanding of man,
though in an invisible way, there exist the perfect leaves, flowers,
and Suit thereof; for things that are in posse to the sense, are
actually existent to the understanding. Thus God beholds all
things, who contemplates as fully His works in their epitome as
in their full volume, and beheld as amply the whole world, in
that little compendium of the sixth day, as in the scattered and
dilated pieces of those five before.
LI

MEN commonly set forth the torments of hell by fire, and the
extremity of corporal afflictions, and describe hell in the same
method that Mahomet doth heaven. This indeed makes a noise,
and drums in popular ears: but if this be the terrible piece thereof,
it is not worthy to stand in diameter with heaven, whose happi-
ness consists in that part that is best able to comprehend it, that
immortal essence, that translated divinity and colony of God, the
soul. Surely, though we place hell under earth, the devil's walk
and purlieu is about it. Men speak too popularly who place it
in those flaming mountains, which to grosser apprehensions re-
present hell. The heart of man is the place the devils dwell in ; I
feel sometimes a hell within myself; Lucifer keeps his court in
my breast; Legion is revived in me. There are as many hells as
li

Anaxagoras conceited worlds. There was more than one hell in
Magdalene, when there were seven devils ; for every devil is an
hell unto himself; he holds enough of torture in his own ubi; and
needs not the misery of circumference to afflict him: and thus, a
distracted conscience here is a shadow or introduction unto hell
hereafter. Who can but pity the merciful intention of those hands
that do destroy themselves.^ The devil, were it in his power,
would do the like; which being impossible, his miseries are
endless, and he suffers most in that attribute wherein he is im-
passible, his immortality.
LII

I THANK God, and with joy I mention it, I was never afraid
of hell, nor ever grewpale at the description of that place. I have
so fixed my contemplations on heaven, that I have almost for-
got the idea of hell; and am afraid rather to lose the joys of the
one, than endure the misery of the other: to be deprived of them
isa perfect hell, and needs methinks no addition to complete our
afflictions. That terrible term hath never detained me from sin,
nor do I owe any good action to the name thereof. I fear God,
yet am not afraid of Him ; His mercies make me ashamed of my
sins, before His judgments afraid thereof: these are the forced and
secondary method of His wisdom, which He useth but as the last
remedy, and upon provocation; — a course rather to deter the
wicked, than incite the virtuous to His worship. I can hardly
think there was ever any scared into heaven : they go the fairest
way to heaven that would serve God without a hell: other mer-
cenaries, that crouch unto Him in fear of hell, though they term
themselves the servants, are indeed but the slaves, of the Al-
mighty.
LIII

AND to be true, and speak my soul, when I survey the occur-
rences of my life, and call into account the finger of God, I can
perceive nothing but an abyss and mass of mercies, either in
general to mankind, orin particular to myself. And, whether out
of the prejudice of my affection, or an inverting and partial con-
ceit of His mercies, I know not, — but those which others term
crosses, afflictions, judgments, misfortunes, to me, who inquire
further into them than their visible effects, they both appear, and
in event have ever proved, the secret and dissembled favours of
Hisaffection. Itis a singular piece of wisdom to apprehend truly,
and without passion, the works of God, and so well to distinguish
His justice from His mercyas not to miscall those noble attributes;
lii

yet it is likewise an honcstpiecc of logick so to dispute and argue
the proceedings of God as to distinguish even His judgments
into mercies. For God is merciful unto all, because better to the
worst than the best deserve ; and to say He punisheth none in
this world, though it be a paradox, is no absurdity. To one that
hath committed murder, if the judge should only ordain a fine,
it were a madness to call this a punishment, and to repine at the
sentence, rather than admire the clemency of the judge. Thus,
our offences being mortal, and deserving not only death but
damnation, if the goodness of God be content to traverse and
pass them over with a loss, misfortune, or disease; what frenzy
were it to term this a punishment, rather than an extremity of
mercy, and to groan under the rod of His judgments rather than
admire the sceptre of His mercies ! Therefore to adore, honour,
and admire Him, is a debt of gratitude due from the obligation of
our nature, states, and conditions: and with these thoughts He
that knows them best will not deny that I adore Him. That I
obtain heaven, and the bliss thereof, is accidental, and not the
intended work of my devotion; it being a felicity I can neither
think to deserve nor scarce in modesty to expect. For these two
ends of us all, either as rewards or punishments, are mercifully
ordained and disproportionably disposed unto our actions ; the
one being so far beyond our deserts, the other so infinitely below
our demerits.
LIV

THERE is no salvation to those that believe notin Christ; that
is, say some, since His nativity, and, as divinity affirmeth, before
also ; which makes me much apprehend the end of those honest
worthies and philosophers which died before His incarnation.
It is hard to place those souls in hell, whose worthy lives do
teach us virtue on earth. Methinks, among those many sub-
divisions of hell, there might have been one limbo left for these.
What a strange vision will it be to see their poetical fictions con-
verted into verities, and their imagined and fancied furies into
real devils! How strange to them will sound the history of
Adam, when they shall suffer for him they never heard of!
When they that derive their genealogy from the gods, shall know
they are the unhappy issue of sinful man ! It is an insolent part
of reason, to controvert the works of God,orquestionthe justice
of His proceedings. Could humility teach others, as it hath in-
structed me, to contemplate the infinite and incomprehensible
distance betwixt the Creator and the creature; or did we seriously
liii

perpend that one simile of St. Paul, " shall the vessel say to the
potter, why hast thou made me thus.''" it would prevent these
arrogant disputes of reason: nor would we argue the definitive
sentence of Grod, either to heaven or hell. Men that live accord-
ing to the right rule and law of reason, live but in their own
kind, as beasts do in theirs; who justly obey the prescript of
their natures, and therefore cannot reasonably demand a reward
of their actions, as only obeying the natural dictates of their
reason. It will, therefore, and must, at last appear, that all sal-
vation is through Christ; which verify, I fear, these great ex-
amples of virtue must confirm, and make it good how the per-
fectest actions of earth have no title or claim unto heaven.
LV

NOR truly do I think the lives of these, or of any other, were
ever correspondent, or in all points conformable, unto their doc-
trines. It is evident that Aristotle transgressed the rule of his own
ethicks ; the stoicks, that condemn passion, and command a man
to laugh in Phalaris his bull, could not endure without a groan
afitof the stone or colick. The seep ticks, that affirmed they knew
nothing, even in that opinion confute themselves, and thought
they knew more than all the world beside. Diogenes I hold
to be the most vainglorious man of his time, and more ambitious
in refusing all honours, than Alexander in rejecting none. Vice
and the devil put a fallacy upon our reasons; and, provoking us
too hastily to run from it, entangle and profound us deeper in it.
The duke of Venice, that weds himself unto the sea, oy a ring
of gold, I will not accuse of prodigality, because it is a solemnity
of good use and consequence in the state: but the philosopher,
that threw his money into the sea to avoid avarice, was a notorious
prodigal. There is no road or ready way to virtue ; it is not an
easy point of art to disentangle ourselves from this riddle or web
of sin. To perfect virtue, as to religion, there is required a panoplia,
or complete armour; that whilst we lie at close ward against one
vice, we lie not open to the veney of another. And indeed wiser
discretions, that have the thread of reason to conductthem, offend
without pardon; whereas under heads may stumble without dis-
honour. There go so many circumstances to piece up one good
action, that it is a lesson to be good, and we are forced to be vir-
tuous by the book. Again, the practice of men holdsnotan equal
pace, yea and often runs counter to their theory; we naturally
know what is good, but naturally pursue what is evil : the rhetorick
wherewith I persuade another cannot persuade myself. There
liv

is a depraved appetite in us, that will with patience hear the
learned instructions of reason, but yet perform no further than
agrees to its own irregular humour. In brief, we all are monsters ;
that is, a composition of man and beast: wherein we must en-
deavour, to be as the poets fancy that wise man, Chiron; that is,
to have the region of man above that of beast, and sense to sit
but at the feet of reason. Lastly, I do desire with God that all, but
yet affirm with men that few, shall know salvation — that the
bridge is narrow, the passage strait unto life : yet those who do
confine thechurch of God either to particular nations, churches,
or families, have made it far narrower than our Saviour ever
meant it.
LVI

THE vulgarity of those judgments that wrap thechurch of God
in Strabo's cloak, and restrain it unto Europe, seem to me as bad
geographers as Alexander, who thought he had conquered all
the world, when he had not subdued the half of any part thereof.
For we cannot deny the church of God both in Asia and Africa,
if we do not forget the peregrinations of the apostles, the deaths
of the martyrs, the sessions of many and (even in our reformed
judgment) lawful councils, held in those parts in the minority
and nonage of ours. Nor must a few differences, more remark-
able in the eyes of man than, perhaps, in the judgment of God,
excommunicate from heaven one another ; much less those Chris-
tians who are in a manner all martyrs, maintaining their faith in
the noble way of persecution , and serving God in the fire, whereas
we honour Him but in the sunshine.

'Tis true, we all hold there is a number of elect, and many to be
saved; yet, take our opinions together, and from the confusion
thereof, there will be no such thing as salvation, nor shall any one
be saved: for, first, the church of Rome condemneth us; we
likewise them; the sub -reformists and sectaries sentence the
doctrine of our church as damnable ; the atomist, or familist, re-
probates all these; and all these, them again. Thus, whilst the
mercies of God do promise us heaven, our conceits and opinions
exclude us from that place. There must be therefore more than
one St. Peter; particular churches and sects usurp the gates of
heaven, and turn the key against each other; and thus we go to
heaven against each other's wills, conceits, and opinions, and,
with as much uncharity as ignorance, do err, I fear, in points not
only of our own, but one another's salvation.

Iv

LVII

I BELIEVE many are saved who to man seem reprobated, and
many are reprobated who in the opinion and sentence of man
stand elected. There will appear, at the last day, strange and un-
expected examples, both of His justice and His mercy; and,there-
fore, to define either is folly in man, and insolency even in the
devils. Those acute and subtile spirits, in all their sagacity, can
hardly divine who shall be saved; which if they could prognos-
tick, their labour were at an end, nor need they compass the earth,
seeking whom they may devour. Those who, upon a rigid ap-
plication of the law, sentence Solomon unto damnation, con-
demn not only him, but themselves, and the whole world; for
by the letter and written word of God, we are -without excep-
tion in the state of death : but there is a prerogative of God, and an
arbitrary pleasure above the letter of his own law, by which alone
we can pretend unto salvation, and through which Solomon
might be as easily saved as those who condemn him.
LVIII

THE number of those who pretend unto salvation, and those
infinite swarms who think to pass through the eye of this needle,
have much amazed me. That name and compellation of "little
flock" doth not comfort, but deject, my devotion; especially
when I reflect upon mine own unworthiness, wherein, accord-
ing to my humble apprehensions,! am below them all. I believe
there shall never be an anarchy in heaven; but, as there are hier-
archies amongst the angels, so shall there be degrees of priority
amongst the saints. Yet is it, I protest, beyond my ambition to
aspire unto the first ranks ; my desires only are, and I shall be
happy therein, to be but the last man, and bring up the rear in
heaven.
LIX

AGAIN, I am confident, and fully persuaded, yet dare not take
my oath, of my salvation. I am, as it were, sure, and do believe
without all doubt, that there is such a city as Constantinople ;
yet, for me to take my oath thereon were a kind of per jury, because
I hold no infallible warrant from my own sense to confirm me
in the certainty thereof. And truly, though many pretend to an
absolute certainty of their salvation, yet, when an humble soul
shall contemplate her own unworthiness, she shall meet with
many doubts, and suddenly find how little we stand in need of
the precept of St. Paul, " work out your salvation with fear and
trembling," That which is the cause of my election, I hold to be
Ivi

the cause of my salvation, which was the mercy and beneplacet
of God, before I was, or the foundation of the world. "Before
Abraham was, I am/' is the saying of Christ, yet is it true in some
sense if I say it of myself; for I was not only before myself but
Adam, that is, in the idea of God, and the decree of that synod
held from all eternity. And in this sense, I say, the world was
before the creation, and at an end before it had a beginning. And
thus was I dead before I was alive; though mygrave beEngland,
my dying place was Paradise; and Eve miscarried of me, before
she conceived of Cain.
LX

INSOLE NTzeals, that do decry good worksand rely only upon
faith, take not away merit : for, depending upon the efficacy of
their faith, they enforce the condition of God, and in a more so-
phistical way do seem to challenge heaven. It was decreed by
God that only those that lapped in the water like dogs, should
have the honour to destroy the Midianites ; yet could none of
those justly challenge, or imagine he deserved, that honourthere-
upon. I do not deny but that true faith, and such as God requires,
is not only a mark or token, but also a means, of our salvation ;
but, where to find this, is as obscure to me as my last end. And if
our Saviour could object, unto H is own disciples and favourites,
a faith that, to the quantity of a grain of mustard seed, is able to
remove mountains ; surely that which we boast of is not any-
thing, or, at the most, but a remove from nothing.
This is the tenourof my belief; wherein, though there be many
things singular, and to the humour of my irregular self, yet, if they
square not with maturer judgments, I disclaim them, and do no
further father them than the learned and best judgments shall
authorize them.

PART THE SECOND

NOW, for that other virtue of charity, without which faith is a
mere notion and of no existence, I have ever endeavoured to
nourish the merciful disposition and humane inclination I bor-
rowed from my parents, and regulate it to the written and pre-
scribed laws of charity . And, if I hold the true anatomy of myself,
I am delineated and naturally framed to such a piece of virtue, —
for I am of a constitution so general that it consorts and sympa-
thizeth with all things ; I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyn-
crasy, in diet, humour, air, anything. I wonder not at the French
for their dishes of frogs, snails, and toadstools, nor at the Tews
Ivii h

for locusts and grasshoppers ; but, being amongst them, make
them my common viands; and I find they agree with my stomach
as well as theirs. I could digest a salad gathered in a church-yard
as well as in a garden. I cannot start at the presence of a serpent,
scorpion, lizard, or salamander; at the sight of a toad or viper, I
find in me no desire to take up a stone to destroy them. I feel
not in myself those common antipathies that I can discover in
others: those national repugnances do not touch me, nor do I
behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch;
but, where I find their actions in balance with my countrymen's,
I honour, love, and embrace them, in the same degree. I was
born in the eighth climate, but seem to be framed and constel-
lated unto all. I am no plant that will not prosper out of a garden.
All places, all airs, make unto me one country; I am in England
everywhere, and under any meridian. I have been shipwrecked,
yet am not enemy with the sea or winds ; I can study, play, or
sleep, in a tempest. In brief I am averse from nothing: my con-
science would give me the lie if I should say I absolutely detest
or hate any essence, but the devil; or so at least abhor anything,
but that we might come to composition. If there be any among
those common objects of hatred I do contemn and laugh at, it is
that great enemy of reason, virtue, and religion, the multitude ;
that numerous piece of monstrosity , which, taken asunder, seem
men, and the reasonable creatures of God, but, confused together,
make but one great beast, and a monstrosity more prodigious
than Hydra. It is no breach of charity to call these fools ; it is the
style all holy writers have afforded them, set down by Solomon in
canonical scripture, and a point of our faith to believe so. Neither
in the name of multitude do I only include the base and minor
sort of people: there is a rabble even amongst the gentry; a sort
of plebeian heads, whose fancy moves with the same wheel as
those; men in the same level with mechanicks, though their for-
tunes do somewhat gild their infirmities, and their purses com-
pound for their follies. But, as in casting account three or four
men together come short in account of one man placed by himself
below them, so neither are a troop of these ignorant Doradoes of
that true esteem and value as many a forlorn person, whose con-
dition doth place him below their feet. Let us speak like poli-
ticians; there is a nobility -without heraldry, a natural dignity,
whereby one man is ranked with another, another filed before
him, according to the quality of his desert, and pre-eminence of
his good parts. Though the corruption of these times, and the
Iviii

bias of present practice, wheel another way, thus it was in the
first and primitive common wealths, and is vet in the integrity
and cradle of well ordered polities : till corruption getteth ground ;
— ruder desires labouring after that which wiser considerations
contemn; — everyonehavingalibertytoamassandheapupriches,
and they a licence or faculty to do or purchase anything.

THIS general and indifferent temper of mine doth more nearly
dispose me to this noble virtue. It is a happiness to be born and
framed unto virtue, and to grow up from the seeds of nature, rather
than the inoculations and forced grafts of education: yet, if we are
directed only by our particular natures, and regulate our inclina-
tions by no higher rule than that of our reasons, we are but mora-
lists; divinity will still call us heathens. Therefore this great work
of charity must have other motives, ends, and impulsions. I give
no alms to satisfy the hunger of my brother, but to fulfil and ac-
complish the will and command of my God ; I draw not my purse
for his sake that demands it, but His that enjoined it; I relieve no
man upon the rhetorick of his miseries, nor to content mine own
commiserating disposition ; for this is still but moral charity, and
an act that oweth more to passion than reason. He that relieves
another upon the bare suggestion and bowels of pity doth not
this so much for his sake as for his own : for by compassion we
make other's misery our own ; and so, by relieving them, we re-
lieve ourselves also. It is as erroneous a conceit to redress other
men's misfortunes upon the common considerations of merciful
natures, that it may be one day our own case ; for this is a sinister
and politick kind of charity, whereby we seem to bespeak the
pities of men in the like occasions. And truly I have observed
that those professed eleemosynaries, though in a crowd or mul-
titude, do yet direct and place their petitions on afewand selected
persons; there is surely a physiognomy, which those experienced
and master mendicants observe, whereby they instantly discover
a merciful aspect, and will single out a face, wherein they spy the
signatures and marks of mercy. For there are mystically in our
faces certain characters which carry in them the motto of our souls,
wherein he that cannot read A B C may read our natures. I hold,
moreover,that there is a phy tognomy,or physiognomy , not onlyof
men, but of plants and vegetables ; and in every one of them some
outward figures which hang as signs or bushes of their inward
forms. The finger of God hath left an inscription upon all His
works, not graphical, or composed of letters, but of their several
Hx

forms, constitutions, parts, and operations, which, aptly joined
together, do make one word that doth express their natures. By
these letters God calls the stars by their names; and by this alpha-
bet Adam assigned to every creature a name peculiar to its nature.
Now, there are, besides these characters in our faces, certain
mystical figures in our hands, which I dare not call mere dashes,
strokes a la volee or at random, because delineated by a pencil
thatnever works in vain; and hereof I take more particular notice,
because I carry that in mine own hand which I could never read
of nor discover in another. Aristotle, I confess, in his acute and
singular book of physiognomy, hath made no mention of chiro-
mancy: yet I believe the Egyptians, who were nearer addicted
to those abstruse and mystical sciences, had a knowledge therein:
to which those vagabond and counterfeit E gyptians did after pre-
tend, and perhaps retained a few corrupted principles, which
sometimes might verify their prognosticks.
It is the common wonder of all men, how, among so many mil-
lions of faces, there should be none alike: now, contrary, I wonder
as much how there should be any. He that shall consider how
many thousand several words have been carelessly and without
study composed out of twenty-four letters ; withal, how many
hundred lines there are to be drawn in the fabrick of one man;
shall easily find that this variety is necessary : and it will be very
hard that they shall so concur as to make one portrait like another.
Let a painter carelessly limn out a million of faces, and you shall
find them all different; yea, let him have his copy before him, yet,
after all his art, there will remain a sensible distinction : for the
pattern or example of everything is the perfectest in that kind,
whereof we still come short, though we transcend or go beyond
it; because herein it is wide, and agrees not in all points unto its
copy. Nor doth the similitude of creatures disparage the variety
of nature, nor any way confound the works of God. For even in
things alike there is diversity: and those that do seem to accord
do manifestly disagree. And thus is man like God ; for, in the
same things that we resemble Him we are utterly different from
Him. There was never anything so like another as in all points
to concur; there will ever some reserved difference slip in, to
prevent the identity; without which two several things would
not be alike, but the same, which is impossible.
Ill

BUT, to return from philosophy to charity, I hold not so narrow
a conceit of this virtue as to conceive, that to give alms is only to
Ix

be charitable, or think a piece of liberality can comprehend the
total of charity. Divinity hath wisely divided the act thereof into
many branches, and hath taught us, in this narrow way, many
paths unto goodness; as many ways as we may do good, so many
ways we may be charitable. There are infirmities not only of
body, but of soul and fortunes, which do require the merciful
hand of our abilities. I cannot contemn a man for ignorance, but
behold him with as much pity as I do Lazarus. It is no greater
charity to clothe his body than apparel the nakedness of his. soul.
It is an honourable object to see the reasons of other men wear
our liveries, and their borrowed understandings do homage to the
bounty of ours. It is the cheapest way of beneficence, and, like
the natural charity of the sun, illuminates another without ob-
scuring itself. To be reserved and caitiff in this part of goodness
is the sordidest piece of covetousness, and more contemptible
than the pecuniary avarice. To this (as calling myself a scholar)
I am obliged by the duty of my condition. I make not therefore
my head a grave, but a treasury of knowledge. I intend no mo-
nopoly, but a community in learning. I study not for my own
sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves. I envy no
man that knows more than myself, but pity them that know less.
I instruct no man as an exercise of my knowledge, or with an
intent rather to nourish and keep it alive in mine own head than
beget and propagate it in his. And, in the midst of all my en-
deavours, there is but one thought that dejects me, that my ac-
quired parts must perish with myself, nor can be legacied among
my honoured friends. I cannot fall out with or condemn a man
for an error, or conceive why a difference in opinion should divide
an affection; for controversies, disputes, and argumentations,
both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and
peaceful natures, do not infringe the laws of charity. In all dis-
putes, so much as there is of passion, so much there is of nothing
to the purpose ; for then reason, like a bad hound, spends upon
a false scent, and forsakes the question first started. And this is
one reason why controversies are never determined ; for, though
they be amply proposed, they are scarce at all handled ; they do
so swell "with unnecessary digressions ; and the parenthesis on
the party is often as large as the main discourse upon the subject.
The foundations of religion are already established, and the prin-
ciples of salvation subscribed unto by all. There remain not
many controversies worthy a passion, and yet never any dis-
pute it without, not only in divinity but inferior arts. What a

/a and hot skirmish is betwixt S. and T. in Lucian!
How do grammarians hack and slash for the genitive case
in Jupiter! How do they break their own pates, to salve that
of Priscian ! Si foret in terris, rideret Democritus. Yea, even
amongst -wiser militants, how many wounds have been given
and credits slain, for the poor victory of an opinion, or beggarly
conquest of a distinction ! Scholars are men of peace, they bear
no arms, but their tongues are sharper than Actius his razor; their
pens carry further, and give a louder report than thunder. I had
rather stand in the shock of a basilisco than in the fury of amerci-
less pen. It is not mere zeal to learning, or devotion to the muses,
that wiser princes patron the arts, and carry an indulgent aspect
unto scholars; but a desire to have their names eternized by the
memory of their writings, and a fear of the revengeful pen of
succeeding ages: for these are the men that, when they have
played their parts, and had their exits, must step out and give the
moral of their scenes, and deliver unto posterity an inventory of
their virtues and vices. And surely there goes a great deal of con-
science to the compiling of an history : there is no reproach to
the scandal of a story ; it is such an authentick kind of falsehood,
that with authority belies our good names to all nations and
posterity.
IV

THERE is another offence unto charity, which no author hath
ever written of, and few take notice of, and that's the reproach,
not of whole professions, mysteries, and conditions, but of whole
nations, wherein by opprobrious epithets we miscall each other,
and, by an uncharitable logick, from a disposition in a few, con-
clude a habit in all.

3^frLe mutin Anglois, et le bravache Escossois;
Le bougre Italien, et le fol Francois ;
Le poltron Romain, le larron de Gascogne,
L'Espagnol superbe, et I'Alleman yvrogne.
St. Paul, that calls the Cretians liars, doth it but indirectly, and
upon quotation of their own poet. It is as bloody a thought in
one way as Nero's was in another. For by a word we wound
a thousand, and at one blow assassin the honour of a nation. It
is as complete a piece of madness to miscall and rave against the
times; or think to recall men to reason by a fit of passion. De-
mocritus, that thought to laugh the times into goodness, seems
to me as deeply hypochondriack as Heraclitus, that bewailed
them. It moves not my spleen to behold the multitude in their
Ixii

proper humours ; that is, in their fits of folly and madness, as
well understanding that wisdom is not profaned unto the world;
and it is the privilege of a few to be virtuous. They that en-
deavour to abolish vice destroy also virtue; for contraries, though
they destroy one another, are yet the life of one another. Thus
virtue (abolish vice) is an idea. Again, the community of sin doth
not disparage goodness; for, when vice gains upon the major
part, virtue, in whom it remains, becomes more excellent, and,
being lost in some, multiplies its goodness in others, which re-
main untouched, and persist entire in the general inundation. I
can therefore behold vice without a satire, content only with an
admonition, or instructive reprehension; for noble natures, and
such as are capable of goodness, are railed into vice, that might
as easily be admonished into virtue; and we should be all so far
the orators of goodness as to protect her from the power of vice,
and maintain the cause of injured truth. No man can justly cen-
sure or condemn another ; because, indeed, no man truly knows
another. This I perceive in myself; for I am in the dark to all
the world, and my nearest friends behold me but in a cloud.
Those that know me but superficially think less of me than I do
of myself; those of my near acquaintance think more; God who
truly knows me, knows that I am nothing : for He only beholds
me, and all the world, who looks not on us through a derived ray,
or a trajection of a sensible species, but beholds the substance
without the help of accidents, and the forms of things, as we
their operations. Further, no man can judge another, because
no man knows himself; for we censure others but as they dis-
agree from that humour which we fancy laudable in ourselves,
and commend others but for that wherein they seem to quad-
rate and consent with us. So that in conclusion, all is but that
we all condemn, self-love. 'Tis the general complaint of these
times, and perhaps of those past, that charity grows cold; which
I perceive most verified in those which most do manifest the
fires and flames of zeal; for it is a virtue that best agrees with
coldest natures, and such as are complexioned for humility. But
how shall we expect charity towards others, when we are un-
charitable to ourselves t " Charity begins at home," is the voice
of the world ; yet is every man his greatest enemy, and as it were
his own executioner. Non occides, is the commandment of God,
yet scarce observed by any man; for I perceive every man is his
own Atropos, and lends a hand to cut the thread of his own
days. Cain was not therefore the first murderer, but Adam, who
Ixiii

brought in death; whereof he beheld the practice and example
in his own son Abel ; and saw that verified in the experience
of another which faith could not persuade him in the theory of
himself.
V

THERE is, I think, no man that apprehendethhis own miseries
less than myself; and no man that so nearly apprehends another's.
I could lose an arm without a tear, and with few groans, methinks,
be quartered into pieces ; yet can I weep most seriously at a play,
and receive with a true passion the counterfeit griefs of those
known and professed impostures. It is a barbarous part of in-
humanity to add unto any afflicted parties misery, or endeavour
to multiply in any man a passion whose single nature is already
above his patience. This was the greatest affliction of Job, and
those oblique expostulations of his friends a deeper injury than
the down-right blows of the devil. It is not the tears of our own
eyes only, but of our friends also, that do exhaust the current of
our sorrows; which, falling into many streams, runs more peace-
ably, and is contented with a narrower channel. It is anact within
the power of charity, to translate a passion out of one breast into
another, and to divide a sorrow almost out of itself; for an afflic-
tion, like a dimension, may be so divided as, if not indivisible,
at least to become insensible. Now with my friend I desire not
to share or participate, but to engross, his sorrows ; that, by
making them mine own, I may more easily discuss them: for in
mine own reason, and within myself, I can command that which
I cannot entreat without myself, and within the circle of another.
I have often thought those noble pairs and examples of friend-
ship, not so truly histories of what had been, as fictions of what
should be; but I now perceive nothing in them but possibilities,
nor anything in the heroick examples of Damon and Pythias,
Achilles, and Patroclus, which, methinks, upon some grounds,
I could not perform within the narrow compass of myself. That
a man should lay down his life for his friend seems strange to
vulgar affections and such as confine themselves within that
worldly principle, " charity begins at home." For mine own
part, I could never remember the relations that I held unto my-
self, nor the respect that I owe unto my own nature, in the cause
of God, my country, and my friends. Next to these three, I do
embrace myself. I confess I do not observe that order that the
schools ordain our affections, — to love our parents, wives, chil-
dren, and then our friends; for, excepting the injunctions of re-
Ixiv

ligion, I do not find in myself such a necessary and indissoluble
sympathy to all those of my blood. I hope 1 do not break the
fifth commandment, if I conceive I may love my friend before
the nearest of my blood, even those to whom I owe the princi-
ples of life. I never yet cast a true affection on a -woman ; but I
nave loved my friend, as I do virtue, my soul, my God. From
hence, methinks, I do conceive how God loves man; what hap-
piness there is in the love of God. Omitting all other, there are
three most mystical unions ; two natures in one person ; three
persons in one nature ; one soul in two bodies. For though, in-
deed, they be really divided, yet are they so united, as they seem
but one, and make rather a duality than two distinct souls.
VI

THERE are wonders in true affection. It is a body of enigmas,
mysteries, and riddles; wherein two so become one as they both
become two : I love my friend before myself, and yet, methinks,
I do not love him enough. Some few months hence, my multi-
plied affection will make me believe I have not loved him at all.
When I am from him, I am dead till I be with him. United souls
are not satisfied with embraces, but desire to be truly each other;
which being impossible, their desires are infinite, and must pro-
ceed without a possibility of satisfaction. Another misery there
is in affection; that -whom we truly love like our own selves, we
forget their looks, nor can our memory retain the idea of their
faces: and it is no wonder, for they are ourselves, and our affec-
tion makes their looks our own. This noble affection falls not
on vulgar and common constitutions; but on such as are marked
forvirtue. He that can love his friend with this noble ardourwill
in a competent degree affect all. Now, if we can bring our affec-
tions to look beyond the body, and cast an eye upon the soul,
we have found out the true object, not only of friendship, but
charity: and the greatest happiness thatwe can bequeath the soul
is that wherein we all do place our last felicity, salvation; which,
though it be not in our power to bestow, it is in our charity and
pious invocations to desire, if not procure and further. I cannot
contentedly frame a prayer for my self in particular, without a cata-
logue for my friends ; nor request a happiness wherein my sociable
disposition doth not desire the fellowship of my neighbour. I
never hear the toll of a passing bell, though in my mirth, without
my prayers and best wishes for the departing spirit. I cannot go
to cure the body of my patient, but I forget my profession, and
call unto God for his soul. I cannot see one say his prayers, but,
Ixv i

instead of imitating him, I fall into supplication for him, who
perhaps is no more to me than a common nature: and if God
hath vouchsafed an ear to my supplications, there are surely many
happy that never saw me, and en joy the blessing of mine unknown
devotions. To pray for enemies, that is, for their salvation, is no
harsh precept , but the practice of our daily and ordinary de vo tio ns .
I cannot believe the story of the Italian; our bad wishes and un-
charitable desires proceed no further than this life ; it is the devil,
and the uncharitable votes of hell, that desire our misery in the
world to come.
VII

"TO do no injury nor take none" was a principle which, to my
former years and impatient affections, seemed to contain enough
of morality, but my more settled years, and Christian constitution,
have fallen upon severer resolutions. I can hold there is no such
thing as injury; that if there be, there is no such injury as revenge,
and no such revenge as the contempt of an injury : that to hate
another is to malign himself; that the truest way to love another
is to despise ourselves. I were unjust unto mine own conscience
if I should say I am at variance with anything like myself. I find
there are many pieces in this one fabrick of man; this frame is
raised upon a mass of antipathies : I am one methinks but as the
world, wherein notwithstanding there are a swarm of distinct
essences, and in them another world of contrarieties; we carry
private and domestick enemies within, publick and more hostile
adversaries without. The devil, that did but buffet St. Paul, plays
methinks at sharp with me. Let me be nothing, if within the com-
pass of myself, I do not find the battle of Lepanto, passion against
reason, reason against faith, faith against the devil, and my con-
science against all. There is another man within me that's angry
with me, rebukes, commands, and dastards me. I have no con-
science of marble, to resist the hammer of more heavy offences:
nor yet so soft and waxen, as to take the impression of each single
peccadillo or scape of infirmity. I am of a strange belief, that it is
as easy to be forgiven some sins as to commit some others. For
my original sin, I hold it to be washed away in my baptism; for
my actual transgressions, I compute and reckon with God but
from my last repentance, sacrament, or general absolution; and
therefore am not terrified with the sins or madness of my youth.
I thank the goodness of God, I have no sins that want a name.
I am not singular in offences; my transgressions are epidemical,
and from the common breath of our corruption. For there are
Ixvi

certain tempers of body which, matched with an humorous de-
pravity of mind, do hatch and produce vitiosities, whose newness
and monstrosity of nature admits no name; this was the temper
of that lecher that carnaled with a statue, and the constitution of
Nero in his spintrian recreations. For the heavens are not only
fruitfulinnewandunheardof stars, theearthin plants and animals,
but men's minds also in villany and vices. Nowthedulness of my
reason, and the vulgarity of my disposition, never prompted my
invention nor solicited myaffection unto any of these; — yet even
those common and quotidian infirmities that so necessarily attend
me, and do seem to be my very nature, have so dejected me, so
broken the estimation that I should have otherwise of myself, that
I repute myself the most abject piece of mortality. Divines pre-
scribe a fit of sorrow to repentance: there goes indignation, anger,
sorrow, hatred, into mine, passions of a contrary nature, which
neither seem to suit with this action, nor my proper constitution.
It is no breach of charity to ourselves to be at variance with our
vices, nor to abhor thatpartof us which is an enemy to the ground
of charity, our God; wherein we do but imitate our great selves,
the world, whose divided antipathies and contrary faces do yet
carry a charitable regard unto the whole, by their particular dis-
cords preserving the common harmony, and keeping in fetters
those powers, whose rebellions, once masters, might be the ruin
of all.
VIII

I THANK God, amongst those millions of vices, I do inherit and
hold from Adam, I have escaped one, and that a mortal enemy to
charity, — the first and father sin, not only of man, but of the devil,
— pride; a vice whose name is comprehended in a monosyllable,
but in its nature not circumscribed with a world, I have escaped
it in a condition that can hardly avoid it. Those petty acquisitions
and reputed perfections, that advance and elevate the conceits of
other men, add no feathers unto mine. I have seen a grammarian
tower and plume himself over a single line in Horace, and show
more pride, in the construction of one ode, than the author in the
composure of the whole book. For my own part, besides the
jargon and patois of several provinces, I understand no less than
six languages; yet I protest I have no higher conceit of myself
than had our fathers before the confusion of Babel, when there
was but one language in the world, and none to boast himself
either linguist or critick. I have not only seen several countries,
beheld the nature of their climes, the chorography of their pro-
Ixvii

vinces, topography of their cities, but understood their several
laws, customs, and policies; yet cannot all this persuade the dul-
ness of my spirit unto such an opinion of myself as I behold in
nimbler and conceited heads, that never looked a degree beyond
their nests. I knowthe names and somewhat more of all thecon'-
stellations in my horizon; yet I have seen a prating mariner, that
could only name the pointers and the north-star, out talk me, and
conceit himself a whole sphere above me. I know most of the
plants of my country, and of those about me, yet methinks I do
not know so many as when I did but know a hundred, and had
scarcely ever simpled further than Cheapside. For, indeed, heads
of capacity, and such as are not full with a handful or easy measure
of knowledge, think they know nothing till they know all ; which
being impossible, they fall upon the opinion of Socrates, and only
know they know not any thing. I cannot think that Homerpined
away upon the riddle of the fishermen, or that Aristotle, who un>-
derstood the uncertainty of knowledge, and confessed so often
the reason of man too weak for the works of nature, did ever dro wn
himself upon the flux and reflux of Euripus. We do but learn,
to-day, what our better advanced judgments will unteach to<-
morrow; and Aristotle doth but instruct us, as Plato did him, that
is, to confute himself. I have run through all sorts, yet find no
rest in any: though our first studies and junior endeavours may
style us Peripateticks,Stoicks,or Academicks,yet I perceive the
wisest heads prove, at last, almost all Scepticks, and stand like
Janus in the field of knowledge. I have therefore one common
and authentick philosophy I learned in the schools, whereby I
discourse and satisfy the reason of other men; another more re~
served,anddrawnfromexperience,wherebylcontentmineown.
Solomon, that complained of ignorance in the height of know--
ledge, hath not only humbled my conceits, but discouraged my
endeavours. There is yet another conceit that hath sometimes
made me shut my books, which tells me it is a vanity to waste
our days in the blind pursuit of knowledge: it is but attending a
little longer, and we shall enjoy that, by instinct and infusion,
which we endeavour at here by labour and inquisition. It is better
to sit down in a modest ignorance, and rest contented with the
natural blessingofourownreasons,than buy the uncertain know--
ledgeof this life with s weat and vexation, which death givesevery
fool gratis, and is an accessory of our glorification.

I WAS never yet once, and commend their resolutions who
Ixviii

never marry twice. Not that I disallow of second marriage ; as
neither inall cases of polygamy, which considering some times,
and the unequal number of both sexes, may be also necessary.
The whole world was made for man, but the twelfth part of
man for woman. Man is the whole world, and the breath of
God; woman the rib and crooked piece of man. I could be
content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction,
or that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this
trivial and vulgar way of coition: it is the foolishest act a wise
man commits in all his life, nor is there any thing that will more
deject his cooled imagination, when he shall consider what an
odd and unworthy piece of folly he hath committed. I speak
not in prejudice, nor am averse from that sweet sex, but natur-
ally amorous of all that is beautiful. I can look a whole day with
delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of an horse.
It is my temper, and I like it the better, to affect all harmony;
and sure there is musick, even in the beauty and the silent note
which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instru-
ment. For there is a musick wherever there is a harmony, order,
or proportion; and thus far we may maintain "the musick of the
spheres:" for those well-ordered motions, and regular paces,
though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understand-
ing they strike a note most full of harmony. Whatsoever is
harmonically composed delights in harmony, which makes me
much distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaim
against all church-musick. For myself, not only from my obedi-
ence but my particular genius I do embrace it: for even that
vulgar and tavern-musick, which makes one man merry, another
mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound con-
templation of the first composer. There is something in it of
divinity more than the ear discovers: it is a hieroglyphical and
shadowed lesson of the whole world, and creatures of God, —
such a melody to the ear, as the whole world, well understood,
would afford the understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of
that harmony which intellectually sounds in the ears of God. I
will not say, with Plato, the soul is an harmony,but harmonical,
and hath its nearest sympathy unto musick : thus some, whose
temper of body agrees, and humours the constitution of their
souls, are born poets, though indeed all are naturally inclined
unto rhythm. This made Tacitus, in the very first line of his
story, fall upon a verse; and Cicero, the worst of poets, but de-
claiming for a poet, falls in the very first sentence upon a perfect
Ixix

hexameter. I feel not in me those sordid and unchristian desires
of my profession ; I do not secretly implore and wish for
plagues, rejoice at famines, revolve ephemerides and almanacks
in expectation of malignant aspects, fatal conjunctions, and
eclipses. I rejoice not at unwholesome springs nor unseasonable
winters : my prayer goes with the husbandman's ; I desire
everything in its proper season, that neither men nor the times
be out of temper. Let me be sick myself, if sometimes the
malady of my patient be not a disease unto me. I desire rather
to cure his infirmities than my own necessities. Where I do him
no good, methinks it is scarce honest gain, though I confess
'tis but the worthy salary of our well intended endeavours. I am
not only ashamed but heartily sorry, that, besides death, there
are diseases incurable; yet not for my own sake or that they be
beyond my art, but for the general cause and sake of humanity,
whose common cause I apprehend as mine own. And, to speak
more generally, those three noble professions which all civil
commonwealths do honour, are raised upon the fall of Adam,
and are not any way exempt from their infirmities. There are
not only diseases incurable in physick, but cases indissolvable
in law, vices incorrigible in divinity. If general councils may
err, I do not see why particular courts should be infallible :
their perfectest rules are raised upon the erroneous reasons of
man, and the laws of one do but condemn the rules of another ;
as Aristotle ofttimes the opinions of his predecessors, because,
though agreeable to reason, yet were they not consonant to his
own rules and the logick of his proper principles. Again, — to
speak nothing of the sin against the Holy Ghost, whose cure
not only, but whose nature is unknown, — I can cure the gout or
stone in some, sooner than divinity, pride, or avarice in others.
I can cure vices by physick when they remain incurable by
divinity, and they shall obey my pills when they contemn their
precepts. I boast nothing, but plainly say, we all labour against
our own cure; for death is the cure of all diseases. There is no
catholicon or universal remedy I know, but this, which though
nauseous to queasy stomachs, yet to prepared appetites is
nectar, and a pleasant potion of immortality.
X

FOR my conversation, it is, like the sun's, with all men, and with
a friendly aspect to good and bad. Methinks there is no man
bad; and the worst best, that is, while they are kept within the
circle of those qualities, wherein they are good. There is no man's
Ixx

mind of so discordant and jarring a temper, to which a tuneable
disposition may not strike a harmony. Magnae virtutes, nee mi-
nora vitia; it is the posy of the best natures, and may be inverted
on the worst. There are, in the most depraved and venomous
dispositions, certain pieces that remain untouched, which by an
antiperistasis become more excellent, or by the excellency of
their antipathies are able to preserve themselves from the con-
tagion of their enemies' vices, and persist entire beyond the
general corruption. For it is also thus in nature : the greatest bal-
sams do lie enveloped in the bodies of the most powerful corro-
sives. I say moreover, and I ground upon experience, that poisons
contain within themselves their own antidotes, and that which
preserves them from the venom of themselves ; without which
they were not deleterious to others only, but to themselves also.
But it is the corruption that I fear within me ; not the contagion
of commerce without me. "Tis that unruly regiment within me,
that will destroy me; 'tis I that do infect myself; the man without
a navel yet lives in me. I feel that original canker corrode and
devour me: and therefore, Defenda me, Dios, de me! "Lord,
deliver me from myself! " is a part of my litany, and the first voice
of my retired imaginations. There is no man alone, because every
man is a microcosm, and carries the whole world about him.
Nunquam minus solus quam cum solus, though it be the apo-
thegm of a wise man is yet true in the mouth of a fool: for indeed,
though in a wilderness, a man is never alone; not only because
he is with himself, and his own thoughts, but because he is with
the devil, who ever consorts with our solitude, and is that unruly
rebel that musters up those disordered motions which accompany
our sequestered imaginations. And to speak more narrowly, there
is no such thing as solitude, nor anything that can be said to be
alone, and by itself, but God; — who is his own circle, and can
subsist by himself ; all others, besides their dissimilary and hetero-
geneous parts, which in a manner multiply their natures, cannot
subsist without the concourse of God, and the society of that hand
which doth uphold their natures. In brief, there can be nothing
truly alone, and by its self, which is not truly one, and such is only
God: all others do transcend an unity, and so by consequence are
many.
XI

NOW for my life, it is a miracle of thirty years, which to relate,
were not a history, but a piece of poetry, and would sound to
common ears like a fable. For the world, I count it not an inn,
Ixxi

but an hospital ; and a place not to live, but to die in. The world
that I regard is myself; it is the microcosm of my own frame that
I cast mine eye on: for the other, I use it but like my globe, and
turn it round sometimes for my recreation. Men that Took upon
my outside, perusing only my condition and fortunes, do err in
my altitude; for I am above Atlas's shoulders. The earth is a
point not only in respect of the heavens above us, but of that
heavenly and celestial part within us. That mass of flesh that
circumscribes me limits not my mind. That surface that tells the
heavens it hath an end cannot persuade me I have any. I take my
circle to be above three hundred and sixty. Though the number
of the ark do measure my body, it comprehendeth not my mind.
Whilst I study to find how I am a microcosm, or little world, I
find myself something more than the great. There is surely a
piece of divinity in us ; something that was before the elements,
and owes no homage unto the sun. Nature tells me, I am the
image of God, as well as Scripture. He that understands not
thus much hath not his introduction or first lesson, and is yet to
begin the alphabet of man. Let me not injure the felicity of others,
If I say I am as happy as any. Ruat coelum, fiat voluntas tua,
salveth all ; so that, whatsoever happens, it is but what our daily
prayers desire. In brief, I am content ; and what should provi-
dence add more S Surely this is it we call happiness, and this do
I enjoy; with this I am happy in a dream, and as content to enjoy
a happiness in a fancy, as others in a more apparent truth and
reality. There is surely a nearer apprehension of any thing that
delights us, in our dreams, than in our waked senses. Without
this I were unhappy ; for my awaked judgment discontents me,
ever whispering unto me that I am from my friend, but my friendly
dreams in the night requite me, and make me think I am within
his arms. I thank God for my happy dreams, as I do for my good
rest; for there is a satisfaction in them unto reasonable desires, and
such as can be content with a fit of happiness. And surely it is
not a melancholy conceit to think we are all asleep in this world,
and that the conceits of this life are as mere dreams, to those of
the next, as the phantasms of the night, to the conceit of the day.
There is an equal delusion in both ; and the one doth but seem
to be the emblem or picture of the other. We are somewhat more
than ourselves in our sleeps; and the slumber of the body seems
to be but the waking of the soul. It is the ligation of sense, but
the liberty of reason; and our waking conceptions do not match
the fancies of our sleeps. At my nativity, my ascendant was the
Ixxii

•watery sign of Scorpio. I -was born in the planetary hour of
Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that leaden planet in me. I
am no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardise
of company; yet in one dream I can compose a whole comedy,
behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake
at the conceits thereof; Were my memory as faithful as my reason
is then fruitful, I would never study but in my dreams, and this
time also would I choose for my devotions: but our grosser
memories have then so little hold of our abstracted understand-
ings, that they forget the story, and can only relate to our awaked
souls a confused and broken tale of that which hath passed.
Aristotle, who hath written a singular tract of sleep, hath not,
methinks, thoroughly defined it; nor yet Galen, though he seem
to have corrected it ; for those noctambulos and night-walkers,
though in their sleep, do yet enjoy the action of their senses. We
must therefore say that mere is something in us that is not in the
jurisdiction of Morpheus ; and that those abstracted and ecstatick
souls do walk about in their own corpses , as spirits with the bodies
they assume, wherein they seem to hear, see, and feel, though in-
deed the organs are destitute of sense, and their natures of those
faculties that should inform them. Thus it is observed, that men
sometimes, upon the hour of their departure, do speak and reason
above themselves. For then the soul begins to be freed from the
ligaments of the body, begins to reason like herself, and to dis-
course in a strain above mortality.
XII

WE term sleep a death; and yet it is waking that kills us, and
destroys those spirits that are the house of life. "Tis indeed a part
of life that best expresseth death; for every man truly lives, so long
as he acts his nature, or some way makes good the faculties of
himself. Themistocles therefore, that slew his soldier in his sleep,
was a merciful executioner: 'tis a kind of punishment the mild-
ness of no laws hath invented ; I wonder the fancy of Lucan and
Seneca did not discover it. It is that death by which -we may be
literally said to die daily; a death which Adam died before his
mortality; a death whereby we live a middle and moderating
point between life and death. In fine, so like death, I dare not
trust it without my prayers, and an half adieu unto the world, and
take my farewell in a colloquy with God: —
>4?frThe night is come, like to the day;
Depart not Thou, great God, away.
Let not my sins, black as the night,
Ixxiii

Eclipse the lustre of Thy light.
Keep still in my horizon ; for to me
The sun makes not the day, but Thee.
Thou whose nature cannot sleep,
On my temples sentry keep ;
Guard me 'gainst those -watchful foes,
Whose eyes are open while mine close.
Let no dreams my head infest,
But such as Jacot's temples blest.
While I do rest, my soul advance :
Make my sleep a holy trance :
That I may, my rest being wrought,
Awake into some holy thought
And with as active vigour run
My course as doth the nimble sun.
Sleep is a death ; — O make me try
By sleeping, what it is to die !
And as gently lay my head
On my grave, as now my bed.
Howe'er I rest, great God, let me
Awake again at last with Thee.
And thus assur'd, behold I lie
Securely, or to wake or die.
These are my drowsy days ; in vain
I do now wake to sleep again:
O come that hour, when I shall never
Sleep again, but wake for ever!

This is the dormitive I take to bedward; I need no other lauda-
num than this to make me sleep ; after which I close mine eyes in
security, content to take my leave of the sun, and sleep unto the
resurrection.
XIII

THE method I should use in distributive justice, I often observe
in commutative; and keep a geometrical proportion in both,
whereby becoming equable to others, I become unjust to my-
self, and supererogateinthat common principle, " Do unto others
as thouwouldst bedone unto thyself." I wras not born unto riches,
neither is it, I think, my star to be wealthy; or if it were, the free-
dom of my mind, and frankness of my disposition, were able to
contradict and cross my fates: for to me avarice seems not so much
a vice, as a deplorable piece of madness ; to conceive ourselves
urinals, or be persuaded that we are dead, is not so ridiculous,
Ixxiv

nor so many degrees beyond the power of hellebore, as this.
The opinions oftheory, and positions of men, are not so void of
reason, as their practised conclusions. Some have held that snow
is black, that the earth moves, that the soul is air, fire, water ; but
all this is philosophy: and there is no delirium, if we do but
speculate the folly and indisputable dotage of avarice. To that
subterraneous idol, and God of the earth, I do confess I am an
atheist. I cannotpersuade myself to honourthat the worldadores;
whatsoever virtue its prepared substance may have within my
body, it hath no influence nor operation without. I would not
entertain a base design, or an action that should call me villain,
for the Indies ; and for this only do I love and honour my own
soul, and have methinks two arms too few to embrace myself.
Aristotle is too severe, that will not allow us to be truly liberal
without wealth, and the bountiful hand of fortune; if this be true,
I must confess I am charitable only in my liberal intentions, and
bountiful well wishes. But if the example of the mite be not only
an act of wonder, but an example of the noblest charity, surely
poor men may also build hospitals, and the rich alone have not
erected cathedrals. I have a private method which others observe
not; I take the opportunity of myself to do good; I borrow oc-
casion of charity from mine own necessities , and supply the wants
of others, when I am in most need myself: for it is an honest
stratagem to take advantage of ourselves, and so to husband the
acts of virtue, that, where they are defective in one circumstance,
they may repay their want, and multiply their goodness in another.
I have not Peru in my desires, but a competence and ability to
perform those good works to which He hath inclined my nature.
He is rich who hath enough to be charitable; and it is hard to be
so poor that a noble mind may not find a way to this piece of
goodness. "He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord:"
there is more rhetorick in that one sentence than in a library of
sermons. And indeed, if those sentences were understood by the
reader with the same emphasis as they are deliveredby the author,
we needed not those volumes of instructions, but might be honest
by an epitome. Upon this motive only I cannot behold a beggar
without relieving his necessities with my purse, or his soul with
my prayers. These scenical and accidental differences between
us cannot make me forget that common and untoucht part of us
both : there is under these centoes and miserable outsides, those
mutilate and semi-bodies, a soul of the same alloy with our own,
whose genealogy is God as well as ours, and in as fair a way to
Ixxv

salvation as ourselves. Statists thatlabourto contrive a common-
wealth without poverty take away the object of our charity; not
understanding only the commonwealth of a Christian, but for-
getting the prophecy of Christ.*
2\.L V

NOW, there is another part of charity, which is the basis and
pillar of this, and that is the love of God for whom we love our
neighbour; for this I think charity, to love God for Himself, and
our neighbour for God. All that is truly amiable is God, or as
it were a divided piece of Him, that retains a reflex or shadow
of Himself. Nor is h strange that we should place affection on
that which is invisible; all that we truly love is thus. What we
adore under affection of our senses deserves not the honour of
so pure a title. Thus we adore virtue, though to the eyes of sense
she be invisible. Thus that part of our noble friends that we love
is not that part that we embrace, but that insensible part that our
arms cannot embrace. God being all goodness, can love nothing
but Himself; He loves us but for that part which is as it were
Himself, and the traduction of His Holy Spirit. Let us call to
assize the loves of our parents, the affections of our wives and
children, and they are all dumb shows and dreams, without
reality, truth, or constancy. For first there is a strong bond of
affection between us and our parents ; yet how easily dissolved !
We betake ourselves to a woman, forgetting our mother in a
wife, and the womb that bare us in that which shall bear our
image. This woman blessing us with children, our affection
leaves the level it held before, and sinks from our bed unto our
issue and picture of posterity: where affection holds no steady
mansion; they growing up in years, desire our ends; or, apply-
ing themselves to a woman, take a lawful way to love another
better than ourselves. Thus I perceive a man may be buried
alive, and behold his grave in his own issue.
I conclude therefore, and say, there is no happiness under (or,
as Copernicus will have it, above) the sun ; nor any crambo in
that repeated verity and burthen of all the wisdom of Solomon;
"All is vanity and vexation of spirit;" there is no felicity in that
the world adores. Aristotle, whilst he labours to refute the ideas
of Plato, falls upon one himself : for his summum bonum is a
chimaera; and there is no such thing as his felicity. That wherein
God Himself is happy, the holy angels are happy, in whose de-

* "The poor ye shall have always with you."
Ixxvi

feet the devils are unhappy; — that dare I call happiness : what-
soever conduceth unto this, may, with an easy metaphor, deserve
that name; whatsoever else the world terms happiness is, to me,
a story out of Pliny, an apparition or neat delusion, wherein there
is no more of happiness than the name. Bless me in this life with
but the peace of my conscience, command of my affections, the
love of Thyself and my dearest friends, and I shall be happy
enough to pity Caesar! These are, O Lord, the humble desires
of my most reasonable ambition, and all I dare call happiness
on earth : wherein I set no rule or limit to Thy hand or provi-
dence; dispose of me according to the wisdom of Thy pleasure.
Thy will be done, though in my own undoing.

Ixxvii

HYDRIOTAPHIA. URN BURIAL; OR, A

DISCOURSE OF THE SEPULCHRAL

URNS LATELY FOUND IN

NORFOLK.

THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY. TO MY WORTHY
ANDHONOUREDFRIEND,THOMASLEGROS,OF
CROSTWICK, ESQUIRE.

WHEN the funeral pyre was out, and the last valediction over,
men took a lasting adieu of their interred friends, little expecting
the curiosity of future ages should comment upon their ashes ;
and, having no old experience of the duration of their relicks,
held no opinion of such after-considerations.
But who knows the fate of his bones, or how often he is to be
buried S Who hath the oracle of his ashes, or whither they are to
be scattered/ The relicks of many lie like the ruins of Pompey's,*
in all parts of the earth; and when they arrive at your hands these
may seem to have wandered far, who, in a direct and meridian
travel,** have but few miles of known earth between yourself
and the pole.

That the bones of Theseus should be seen again in Athens *
was not beyond conjecture and hopeful expectation : but that
these should arise so opportunely to serve yourself was an hit of
fate, and honour beyond prediction.

We cannot but wish these urns might have the effect of theatrical
vessels and great Hippodrome urns * in Rome, to resound the
acclamations and honour due unto you. But these are sad and
sepulchral pitchers, which have no joyful voices; silently ex-
pressing old mortality, the ruins of forgotten times, and can only
speak with life, how long in this corruptible frame some parts
may be uncorrupted; yet able to outlast bones long unborn,
and noblest pile among us.**

Wepresent not these as any strange sight or spectacle unknown
to your eyes, who have beheld the best of urns and noblest
variety of ashes ; who are yourself no slender master of anti-
quities, and can daily command the view of so many imperial
faces ; which raiseth your thoughts unto old things and con-
sideration of times before you, when even living men were
antiquities ; when the living might exceed the dead, and to de-
part this world could not be properly said to go unto the greater

* Pompeios juvenes Asia atque Europa, sed ipsum terra tegit
Libyos.

* Little directly but sea, between your house and Greenland.

* Brought back by Cimon. Plutarch.

* The great urns in the Hippodrome at Rome, conceived to re-
sound the voices of people at their shows.

** Worthily possessed by that true gentleman, Sir Horatio
Townshend, my honoured friend.

Ixxxi 1

number.* And so run up your thoughts upon the Ancient of
Days, the antiquary's truest object, unto whom the eldest parcels
are young, and earth itself an infant, and without Egyptian^
account makes but small noise in thousands.
We were hinted by the occasion, not catched the opportunity to
write of old things, or intrude upon the antiquary. We are coldly
drawn unto discourses of antiquities, who have scarce time
before us to comprehend new things, or make out learned
novelties. But seeing they arose, as they lay almost in silence
among us, at least in short account suddenly passed over, we
were very unwilling they should die again, and be buried twice
among us.

Beside, to preserve the living, and make the dead to live, to keep
men out of their urns, and discourse of human fragments in them,
is not impertinent unto our profession ; whose study is life and
death, who daily behold examples of mortality, and of all men
least need artificial mementos, or coffins by our bedside, to mind
us of our graves.

'Tis time to observe occurrences, and let nothing remarkable
escape us: the supinity of elder days hathleft so much in silence,
or time hath so martyred the records, that the most industrious
heads * do find no easy work to erect a new Britannia.
'Tis opportune to look back upon old times, and contemplate
our forefathers. Great examples grow thin, and to be fetched
from the passed world. Simplicity flies away, and iniquity
comes at long strides upon us. We have enough to do to make
up ourselves from present and passed times, and the whole stage
of things scarce serveth for our instruction. A complete piece
of virtue must be made from the centos of all ages, as all the
beauties of Greece could make but one handsome Venus.
When the bones of King Arthur were digged up,x the old race
might think they beheld therein some originals of themselves;
unto these of our urns none here can pretend relation, and can
only behold the relicks of those persons who, in their life giving
the laws unto their predecessors, after long obscurity, now lie
at their mercies. But, remembering the early civility they brought

* Abiit ad plures.

* Which makes the world so many years old.

* Wherein Mr. Dugdale hath excellently well endeavoured, and
worthy to be countenanced by ingenuous and noble persons.

* In the time of Henry the second. — Camden.
Ixxxii

upon these countries, and forgetting long-passed mischiefs, we
mercifully preserve their bones, and piss not upon their ashes.
In the offer of these antiquities we drive not at ancient families,
so long outlasted by them. We are far from erectingyour worth
upon the pillars of your forefathers, whose merits you illustrate.
We honour your old virtues, conformable unto times before you,
which are the noblest armoury. And, having long experience
of your friendly conversation, void of empty formality, full of
freedom, constant and generous honesty, I look upon you as a
gem of the old rock,* and must profess myself even to urn and
ashes,

Your ever faithful Friend and Servant,

THOMAS BROWNE.
Norwich, May i st.

* Adamas de rupe veteri praestantissimus,
Ixxxiii

HYDRIOTAPHIA.

CHAPTER I.

IN the deep discovery of the subterranean world, a shallow
part would satisfy some inquirers ; who, if two or three yards
were open about the surface, would not care to rake the bowels
of Potosi,* and regions towards the centre. Nature hath fur-
nished one part of the earth, and man another. The treasures of
time lie high, in urns, coins, and monuments, scarce below the
roots of some vegetables. Time hath endless rarities, and shows
of all varieties ; which reveals old things in heaven, makes new-
discoveries in earth, and even earth itself a discovery. That great
antiquity America lay buried for thousands of years, and a large
part of the earth is still in the urn unto us.

Though, if Adam were made out of an extract of the earth, all
parts might challenge a restitution, yet few have returned their
bones far lower than they might receive them; not affecting the
graves of giants, under hilly and heavy coverings, but content
with less than their own depth, have wished their bones might
lie soft, and the earth be light upon them. Even such as hope
to rise again, would not be content with central interment, or so
desperately to place their relicks as to lie bey ond discovery ; and
in no way to be seen again; which happy contrivance hath made
communication with our forefathers, and left unto our view some
parts, which they never beheld themselves.
Though earth hath engrossed the name, yet water hath proved
the smartest grave; which in forty days swallowed almost man-
kind, and the living creation; fishes not wholly escaping, ex-
cept the salt ocean were handsomely contempered by a mixture
of the fresh element.

Many have taken voluminous pains to determine the state of the
soul upon disunion; but men have been most phantastical in the
singular contrivances of their corporal dissolution : whilst the
soberest nations have rested in two ways, of simple inhumation
and burning.

That carnal interment or burying was of the elder date, the old
examples of Abraham and the patriarchs are sufficient to illus-
trate; and were without competition, if it could be made out that
Adam was buried near Damascus, or Mount Calvary, according
to some tradition. God Himself, that buried but one, was pleased
to make choice of this way, collectible from Scripture expres-
sion, and the hot contest between Satan and the archangel, about

* The rich mountain of Peru.
Ixxxv

discovering the body of Moses. But the practice of burning was
also of great antiquity, and of no slender extent. For (not to
derive the same from Hercules) noble descriptions there are here-
of in the Grecian funerals of Homer, in the formal obsequies of
Patroclusand Achilles; and somewhat elder in theThebanwar,
and solemn combustion of Meneceus, and Archemorus, con-
temporary unto Jair the eighth judge of Israel. Confirmable also
among the Trojans, from the funeral pyre of Hector, burnt before
the gates of Troy : and the burning or Penthesilea the Amazonian
queen :* and long continuance of that practice, in the inward
countries of Asia ; while as low as the reign of Julian, we find
that the king of Chionia^ burntthe body of his son, and interred
the ashes in a silver urn.

The same practice extended also far west ; * and, besides Heru-
lians, Getes, and Thracians, was in use with most of the Celtae,
Sarmatians, Germans, Gauls, Danes, Swedes, Norwegians ; not
to omit some use thereof among Carthaginians and Americans.
Of greater antiquity among the Romans than most opinion, or
Pliny seems to allow: for (beside the old Table Laws of burning
or burying within the city, * of making the funeral fire with planed
wood, or quenching the fire with wine), Manlius the consul
burnt the body of his son : Numa, by special clause of his will,
was not burnt but buried; and Remus was solemnly burned,
according to the description of Ovid.**

Cornelius Sylla was not the first whose body was burned in
Rome, but the first of the Cornelian family; which, being in-
differently, not frequently used before, from that time spread,
and became the prevalent practice. Not totally pursued in the
highest run of cremation ; for, when even crows were funerally
burnt, Poppaea the wife of Nero found a peculiar grave interment.

* Q. Calaber, lib. i.

* Gumbrates, king of Chionia, a country near Persia. — Ammi-
anus Marcellinus.

* Arnold. Montan. not. in Caes. Commentar. L. Gyraldus. Kirk-
mannus.

* Tabul. part i. de jure sacro. Hominem mortuum in urbe ne
sepelito,neve urito, torn. 2. Rogum ascict ne polito, torn. 4. Item
Vigeneri Annotat. in Livium, et Alex, cum Tiraquello. Roscinus
cum Dempstero.

** Ultima prolato subdita flamma rogo. De Fast. lib. iv. cum

Car. Neapol. Anaptyxi.

Ixxxvi

Now as all customs were founded upon some bottom of reason,
so there wanted not grounds for this; according to several appre-
hensions of the most rational dissolution. Some being of the
opinion of Thales, that water was the original of all things,thought
it most equal to submit unto the principle of putrefaction, and
conclude in a moist relentment. Others conceived it most natural
to end in fire, as due unto the master principle in the composi-
tion, according to the doctrine of Heraclitus; and therefore heaped
up large piles, more actively to waft them toward that element,
whereby they also declined a visible degeneration into worms,
and left a lasting parcel of their composition.
Some apprehended a purifying virtue in fire, refining the grosser
commixture, and firing out the aethereal particles so deeply im-
mersed in it. And such as by tradition or rational conjecture held
any hint of the final pyre of all things, or that this element at last
must be too hard for all the rest, might conceive most naturally
of the fiery dissolution. Others pretending no natural grounds,
politickly declined the malice of enemies upon their buried
bodies. Which consideration led Sylla unto this practice; who
having thus served the body of Marius, could not but fear a re-
taliation upon his own; entertained after in the civil wars, and
revengeful contentions of Rome.

But, as many nations embraced, and many left it indifferent, so
others too much affected, or strictly declined this practice. The
Indian Brachmans seemed too great friends unto fire, who burnt
themselves alive, and thought it the noblest way to end their
days in fire ; according to the expression of the Indian, burning
himself at Athens,* in his last words upon the pyre unto the
amazed spectators, " Thus I make myself immortal."
But the Chaldeans, the great idolaters of fire, abhorred the burn-
ing of their carcases, as a pollution of that deity. The Persian
magi declined it upon the like scruple, and being only solicitous
about their bones, exposed their flesh to the prey of birds and
dogs. And the Parsees now in India, which expose their bodies
unto vultures, and endure not so much asferetraor biers of wood,
the proper fuel of fire, are led on with such niceties. But whether
the ancient Germans, who burned their dead, held any such fear to
pollute their deity of Herthus, or the earth, we have no authentic
conjecture.

* And therefore the inscription of his tomb was made accord-
ingly.— Nic. Damasc.
Ixxxvii

The Egyptians were afraid of fire, not as a deity, but a devour-
ing element, mercilessly consuming their bodies, and leaving too
little of them; and therefore by precious embalmments, deposi-
ture in dry earths, or handsome inclosure in glasses, contrived the
notablestways of integral conservation. And from such Egyp-
tian scruples, imbibed by Pythagoras, it maybe conjectured that
Numa and the Pythagorical sect first waved the fiery solution.
The Scythians, who swore by wind and sword, that is, by life
and death, were so far from burning their bodies, that they de-
clined all interment, and made their graves in the air: and the
Ichthyophagi, or fish-eating nations about Egypt, affected the
sea for their grave; thereby declining visible corruption, and
restoring the debt of their todies. Whereas the old heroes, in
Homer, dreaded nothing more than water or drowning; pro-
bably upon the old opinion of the fiery substance of the soul,
only extinguishable by that element; and therefore the poet em-
phatically implieth the total destruction in this kind of death,
which happened to Ajax Oileus.*

The old Balearians* had a peculiar mode, for they used great
urns and much wood, but no fire in their burials, while they
bruised the flesh and bones of the dead, crowded them into urns,
and laid heaps of wood upon them. And the Chinese* without
cremation or urnal interment of their bodies, make use of trees
and much burning, while they plant a pine-tree by their grave,
and burn great numbers of printed draughts of slaves and horses
over it, civilly content with their companies in effigie, which
barbarous nations exact unto reality.

Christians abhorred this way of obsequies, and though they
sticked not to give their bodies to be burnt in their lives, detested
that mode after death; affecting rather a depositure thanabsump-
tion, and properly submitting unto the sentence of God, to return
not unto ashes but unto dust again, conformable unto the prac-
tice of the patriarchs, the interment of our Saviour, of Peter, Paul,
and the ancient martyrs. And so far at last declining promis-
cuous interment with Pagans, that some have suffered ecclesias-
tical censures,* for making no scruple thereof.
The Musselman believers will never admit this fiery resolution.

* Which Magius reads e£a7ro'Aa>Xe.
% Diodorus Siculus.

* Ramusius in Navigat.

* Martialis the Bishop. Cyprian.
Ixxxviii

For they hold a present trial from their black and white angels
in the grave; which they must have made so hollow, that they
may rise upon their knees.

The Jewish nation, though they entertained the old way of in>-
humation, yet sometimes admitted this practice. For the men of
Jabesh burnt the body of Saul; and by no prohibited practice,
to avoid contagion or pollution, in time of pestilence, burnt the
bodies of their friends.* And when they burnt not their dead
bodies, yet sometimes used great burnings near and about them,
deducible from the expressions concerning Jehoram, Zedechias,
and the sumptuous pyre of Asa. And were so little averse from
Pagan burning, that the Jews lamenting the death of Cxsar their
friend, and revenger on Pompey, frequented the place where his
body was burnt for many nights together.* And as they raised
noble monuments and mausoleums for their own nation, * so
they were not scrupulous in erecting some for others, according
to the practice of Daniel, who left that lasting sepulchral pile in
Ecbatana, for the Median and Persian kings. *
But even in times of subjection and hottest use, they conformed
not unto the Roman practice of burning; whereby the prophecy
was secured concerning the body of Christ, that it should not
see corruption, or a bone should not be broken ; which we be-
lieve was also providentially prevented, from the soldier's spear
and nails that passed by the little bones both in His hands and
feet ; not of ordinary contrivance, that it should not corrupt on
the cross, according to the laws of Roman crucifixion, or an hair
of His head perish, though observable in Jewish customs, to cut
the hairs of malefactors.

Nor in their long cohabitation with Egyptians, crept into a cus-
tom of their exact embalming, wherein deeply slashing the
muscles, and taking out the brains and entrails, they had broken
the subject of so entire a resurrection, nor fully answered the
types of Enoch, Elijah, or Jonah, which yet to prevent or restore,
was of equal facility unto that rising power, able to break the
fasciations and bands of death, to get clear out of the cerecloth,

* Amos vi. 10.

* Sueton. in vita Jul. Caes.

* As that magnificent sepulchral monument erected by Simon,
i Mace. xiii.

* Karao-Kcvacrfia Oav/macricos Tre-rro^/xeW, whereof a Jewish priest had

always the custody, unto Josephus his days. — Jos. Antiq. lib. x.
Ixxxix m

and an hundred pounds of ointment, and out of the sepulchre
before the stone -was rolled from it.

But though they embraced not this practice of burning, yet enter-
tained they many ceremonies agreeable unlo Greek and Roman
obsequies. And he that observeth their funeral feasts, their la-
mentations at the grave, their music, and "weeping mourners ;
how they closed the eyes of their friends, how they washed,
anointed, and kissed the dead; may easily conclude these were
not mere Pagan civilities. But whether that mournful burthen,
and treble calling out after Absalom,* had any reference unto the
last conclamation, and triple valediction, used by other nations,
we hold but a wavering conjecture.

Civilians make sepulture but of the law of nations, others do
naturally found it and discover it also in animals. They that are
so thick-skinned as still to credit the story of the Phcenix, may
say something for animal burning. More serious conjectures find
some examples of sepulture in elephants, cranes, the sepulchral
cells of pismires,andpractice of bees, — which civil societycarrieth
out their dead, and hath exequies, if not interments.
CHAPTER II.

THE solemnities, ceremonies, rites of their cremation or inter-
ment, so solemnly delivered by authors, we shall not disparage
our reader to repeat. Only the last and lasting part in their urns,
collected bones and ashes, we cannot wholly omit or decline
that subject, which occasion lately presented, in some discovered
among us.

Inafield of Old Walsingham, not many months past, were digged
up between forty and fifty urns, deposited in a dry and sandy
soil, not a yard deep, nor far from one another. — Not all strictly
of one figure, but most answering these described : some con-
taining two pounds of bones, distinguishable in skulls, ribs, jaws,
thigh bones, and teeth, with fresh impressions of their combus-
tion ; besides the extraneous substances, likepieces of small boxes,
or combs handsomely wrought, handles of small brass instru-
ments, brazen nippers, and in one some kind of opal.^
Near the same plot of ground, for about six yards compass, were
digged up coals and incinerated substances, which begat con-
jecture that this was the ustrina or place of burning their bodies,

* 2 Sam. xviii. 33.

* In one sent me by my worthy friend, Dr. Thomas Witherly
of Walsingham.

xc

or some sacrificing place unto the manes, which was properly
below the surface of the ground, as the arae and altars unto the
gods and heroes above it.

That these were the urns of Romans from the common custom
and place where they were found, is no obscure conjecture, not
far from a Roman garrison, and but five miles from Brancaster,
set down by ancient record under the name of Branodunum.
And where the adjoining town, containing seven parishes, in no
very different sound, but Saxon termination, still retains the name
of Burnham, which being an early station, it is not improbable
the neighbour parts were filled with habitations , either of Romans
themselves, or Britons Romanized, which observed the Roman
customs.

Nor is it improbable,that the Romans early possessed this country.
For though we meet not with such strict particulars of these parts
before the new institution of Constantine and military charge of
the count of the Saxon shore, and that about the Saxon invasions,
the Dalmatian horsemen were in the garrison of Brancaster; yet
in the time of Claudius, Vespasian, and Severus, we find no less
than three legions dispersed through the province of Britain.
And as high as the reign of Claudius a great overthrow was given
unto the Iceni, by the Roman lieutenant Ostorius. Not long after,
the country was so molested, that, in hope of a better state, Pra-
sutagus bequeathed his kingdom unto Nero and his daughters ;
and Boadicea, his queen, fought the last decisive battle with
Paulinus. After which time, and conquest of Agricola, the lieu-
tenant of Vespasian, probable it is, they wholly possessed this
country; ordering it into garrisons or habitations best suitable
with their securities. And so some Roman habitations not im-
probable in these parts, as high as the time of Vespasian, where
the Saxons after seated, in whose thin-filled maps we yet find
the name of Walsingham. Now if the Iceni were but Gamma-
dims, Anconians, or men that lived in an angle, wedge, or elbow
of Britain, according to the original etymology, this country will
challenge the emphatical appellation, as most properly making
the elbow or iken of Icenia.

That Britain was notably populous is undeniable, from that ex-
pression of Caesar.* That the Romans themselves were early in
no small numbers, seventy thousand, with their associates slain

* Hominum infinita multitudo est, creberrimaque ; aedificia fere

Gallicis consimilia. — Caes. de Bello Gal. 1. v.

xci

by Boadicea, affords a sure account. And though many Roman
habitations are now unknown, yet some, by old works, rampicrs,
coins, and urns, do testify their possessions. Some urns have been
found at Castor, some also about Southcreak, and, not many years
past, no less than ten in a field at Buxton,* not near any recorded
garrison. Nor is it strange to find Roman coins of copper and
silver among us; of Vespasian, Trajan, Adrian, Commodus,
Antoninus, Severus, G*c. ; but the greater number of Dioclesian,
Constantine, Constans, Valens, with many of Victorinus Post-
humius, Tetricus, and the thirty tyrants in the reign of Gallienus ;
and some as high as Adrianus have been found about Thetford,
or Sitomagus, mentioned in the Itinerary of Antoninus, as the way
from Venta or Castor unto London.* But the most frequent dis-
covery is made at the two Castors by Norwich and Yarmouth,*
at Burghcastle, and Brancaster.*

Besides the Norman, Saxon, and Danish pieces of Cuthred,
Canutus, William, Matilda,** and others, some British coins of
gold have been dispersedly found, and no small number of silver
pieces near Norwich,** with a rude head upon the obverse, and
an ill-formed horse on the reverse, with inscriptions Ic. Duro.
T.; whether implying Iceni, Durotriges,Tascia,orTrinobantes,
we leave to higher conjecture. Vulgar chronology will have
Norwich Castle as old as Julius Caesar; but his distance from

* In the ground of my worthy friend Robert Jegon, Esq.;
wherein some things contained were preserved by the most
worthy Sir William Paston, Bart.

* From Castor to Thetford the Romans accounted thirty-two
miles, andfrom thence observed not our common road to London,
but passed by Combretonium ad Ansam, Canonium, Caesaro-
magus, 6>c., by Bretenham, Coggeshall, Chelmsford, Brent-
wood, G'c.

* Most at Castor by Yarmouth, found in a place called East-
bloudy-burgh Furlong, belonging to Mr. Thomas Wood, a
person of civility, industry, and knowledge in this way, who
hath made observation of remarkable things about him, and from
whom we have received divers silver and copper coins.

* Belonging to that noble gentleman, and true example of worth,
Sir Ralph Hare, Bart., my honoured friend.

** Apiece of Maud, the empress, said to befoundinBuckenham
Castle, with this inscription, — Elle n' a elle.
** At Thorpe,
xcii

these parts, and its gothick form of structure, abridgeth such an-
tiquity. The British coins afford conjecture of early habitation
in these parts, though the city of Norwich arose from the ruins
of Venta; and though, perhaps, not without some habitation
before, was enlarged, builded, and nominated by the Saxons.
In what bulk or populosity it stood in the old East*- Angle mon-
archy tradition and history are silent. Considerable it was in the
Danish eruptions, when Sueno burnt Thetford and Norwich,*
and Ulfketel, the governor thereof, was able to make some re-
sistance, and after endeavoured to burn the Danish navy.
How the Romans left so many coins in countries of their con-
quests seems of hard resolution ; except we consider how they
buried them under ground when, upon barbarous invasions, they
were fain to desert their habitations in most part of their empire,
and the strictness of their laws forbidding to transfer them to any
other uses : wherein the Spartans** were singular, who, to make
their copper money useless, contempered it with vinegar. That
the Britons left any, some wonder, since their money was iron
and iron rings before Caesar ; and those of after-stamp by per-
mission, and but small in bulk and bigness. That so few or the
Saxons remain, because, overcome by succeeding conquerors
upon the place, their coins, by degrees, passed into other stamps
and the marks of after-ages.

Than the time of these urns deposited, or precise antiquity of
these relicks, nothing of more uncertainty ; for since the lieutenant
of Claudius seems to have made the first progress into these parts,
since Boadicea was overthrown by the forces of Nero, and
Agricola put a full end to these conquests, it is not probable the
country was fully garrisoned or planted before ; and, therefore,
however these urns might be of later date, not likely of higher
antiquity.

And the succeeding emperors desisted not from their conquests
in these and other parts, as testified by history and medal in-
scription yet extant : the province of Britain, in so divided a dis-
tance from Rome, beholding thefaces of many imperial persons,
and in large account; no fewer than Caesar, Claudius, Britan-
nicus, Vespasian, Titus, Adrian, Severus, Commodus, Geta, and
Caracalla.
A great obscurity herein, because no medal or emperor's coin

* Brampton Abbas Forevallensis.

* Plut. in vital Lycurg.
xciii

enclosed, which might denote the date of their interments; ob-
servable in many urns, and found in those of Spitalfields, by
London,* which contained the coins of Claudius, Vespasian,
Commodus, Antoninus, attended with lacrymatories, lamps,
bottles of liquor, and other appurtenances of affectionate super-
stition, which in these rural interments were wanting.
Some uncertainty there is from the period or term of burning, or
the cessation of that practice. Macrobius affirmeth it was disused
in his days ; but most agree, though without authentic record,
that it ceased with the Antonini, — most safely to be understood
after the reign of those emperors which assumed the name of
Antoninus, extending unto Heliogabalus. Not strictly after
Marcus; for about fifty years later, we find the magnificent burn-
ing and consecration of Severus ; and, if we so fix this period
or cessation, these urns will challenge above thirteen hundred
years.

But whether this practice was only then left by emperors and
great persons, or generally about Rome, and not in other pro-
vinces, we hold no authentic account; for after Tertullian, in the
days of Minucius, it was obviously objected upon Christians,
that they condemned the practice of burning.** And we find a
passage in Sidonius,* which asserteth that practice in France
unto a lower account. And, perhaps, not fully disused till
Christianity fully established, which gave the final extinction to
these sepulchral bonfires.

Whether they were the bones of men, or women, or children, no
authentic decision from ancient custom in distinct places of burial.
Although not improbably conjectured, that the double sepulture,
or burying-place of Abraham,* had in it such intention. But from
exility of bones, thinness of skulls, smallness of teeth, ribs, and
thigh bones, not improbable that many thereof were persons of
minor age, or women. Confirmable also from things contained
in them. In most were found substances resembling combs,
plates like boxes, fastened with iron pins, and handsomely over-
wrought like the necks or bridges of musical instruments ; long
brass plates overwrought like the handles of neat implements ;

* Stowe's Survey of London.

* Execrantur rogos, et damnant ignium sepulturam. — Min. in
Oct.

14 Sidon. Apollinaris.

* Gen. xxiii. ^.
xciv

brazen nippers, to pull away hair ; and in one a kind of opal, yet
maintaining a bluish colour.

Now that they accustomed to burn or bury with them things
wherein they excelled, delighted, or which were dear unto them,
either as farewells unto all pleasure, or vain apprehension that
they might use them in the o trier world, is testified by all antiquity,
observable from the gem or beryl ring upon the finger of Cynthia,
the mistress of Propertius, when after her funeral pyre her ghost
appeared unto him ; and notably illustrated from the contents of
that Roman urn preserved by Cardinal Farnese, * wherein besides
great number of gems with heads of gods and goddesses, were
found an ape of agath, a grasshopper, an elephant of amber, a
crystal ball, three glasses, two spoons, and six nuts of crystal; and
beyond the content of urns, in the monument of Childerick the
first,* and fourth king from Pharamond, casually discovered three
years past at Tournay, restoring unto the world much gold richly
adorning his sword, two hundred rubies, many hundred imperial
coins, three hundred golden bees, the bones and horse-shoes of
his horse interred with him, according to the barbarous magnifi-
cence of those days in their sepulchral obsequies. Although, if
we steer by the conjecture of many and Septuagint expression,
some trace thereof may be found even with the ancient Hebrews,
not only from the sepulchral treasure of David, but the circum-
cision knives which Joshua also buried.

Some men, considering the contents of these urns, lasting pieces
and toys included in them, and the custom of burning with many
other nations, might somewhat doubt whether all urns found
among us, were properly Roman relicks, or some not belonging
unto our British, Saxon, or Danish forefathers.
In the form of burial among the ancient Britons, the large dis-
courses of Caesar, Tacitus, and Strabo are silent. For the dis-
covery whereof, with other particulars, we much deplore the loss
of that letter which Cicero expected or received from his brother
Quintus, as a resolution of British customs ; or the account which
might have been made by Scribonius Largus, the physician, ac-
companying the Emperor Claudius, who might have also dis-
covered that frugal bit of the old Britons, * which in the bigness
of a bean could satisfy their thirst and hunger.

* Vigeneri Annot. in 4. Liv.

* Chifflet. in Anast. Childer.

* Dionis excerpta per Xiphilin. in Severo.
xcv

But that the Druids and ruling priests used to burn and bury, is
expressed by Pomponius ; that JBellinus, the brother of Brennus,
and king of the Britons, was burnt, is acknowledged by Poly-
dorus, as also by Amandus Zierexensis in Historia, and Pineda
in his Universa Historia (Spanish). That they held that practice
in Gallia, Caesar expressly delivereth. Whether the Britons (pro-
bably descended from them, of like religion, language, and man-
ners) did not sometimes make use of burning, or whether at least
such as were after civilized unto the Roman life and manners,
conformed not unto this practice, we have no historical assertion
or denial. But since, from the account of Tacitus, the Romans
early wrought so much civility upon the British stock, that they
brought them to build temples, to wear the gown, and study the
Roman laws and language, that they conformed also unto their
religious rites and customs in burials, seems no improbable con-
jecture.

ThatburningthedeadwasusedinSarmatiaisaffirmedbyGagu-
inus; that the Sueons and Gothlandersused to burn their princes
and great persons, is delivered by Saxo and Olaus; that this was
the old German practice, is also asserted byTacitus. And though
we are bare in historical particulars of such obsequies in this island,
or that the Saxons, Jutes, and Angles burnt their dead, yet came
they from parts where 'twas of ancient practice ; the Germans
using it, from whom they were descended. And even in Jutland
and Sleswick in Anglia Cymbrica, urns with bones were found
not many years before us.

But the Danish and northern nations have raised an era or point
of compute from their custom of burning their dead ; * some de-
riving it from Unguinus, some from Frotho the great, who or-
dained by law, that princes and chief commanders should be
committed unto the fire, though the common sort had the com-
mon grave interment. So Starkatterus, that old hero, was burnt,
and Ringo royally burnt the body of Harold the king slain by him.
What time this custom generally expired in that nation, we dis-
cern no assured period; whether it ceased before Christianity,
or upon their conversion, by Ausgurius the Gaul, in the time of
Ludovicus Pius the son of Charles the Great, according to good
computes ;orwhetheritmightnotbeusedbysomepersons, while
for an hundred and eighty years Paganism and Christianity were
promiscuously embraced among them, there is no assured con-

* Roisold, Brendetyde. lid tyde.
xcvi

elusion. About which times the Danes were busy in England,
and particularly infested this county; where many castles and
strongholds were built by them, or against them, and great num-
ber of names and families still derived from them. But since this
custom was probably disused before their invasion or conquest,
and the Romans confessedly practised the same since their pos-
session of this island, the most assured account will fall upon the
Romans, or Britons Romanized.

However, certain it is, that urns conceived of no Roman original,
are often digged up both in Norway and Denmark, handsomely
described, and graphically represented by the learned physician
Wormius.* AndinsomepartsofDenmarkinnoordinarynumber,
as stands delivered by authors exactly describing those countries.*
And they contained not only bones, but many other substances
in them, as knives, pieces of iron, brass, and wood, and one of
Norway a brass gilded Jew's-harp.

Nor were they confused or careless in disposing the noblest sort,
while they placed large stones in circle about the urns or bodies
which they interred : somewhat answerable unto the monument
of Rollrich stones in E ngland, * or sepulchral monumentprobably
erected by Rollo, who after conquered Normandy; where 'tis not
improbable somewhat might be discovered. Meanwhile to what
nation or person belonged that large urn found at Ashbury,* con-
taining mighty bones, and a buckler; what those large urns found
at Little Massingham;** or why the Anglesea urns are placed
with their mouths downward, remains yet undiscovered.
CHAPTER III.

PLAISTERED andwhited sepulchres were anciently affected
in cadaverous and corrupted burials ; and the rigid Jews were
wont to garnish the sepulchres of the righteous.8^ Ulysses, in He-
cuba, cared not how meanly he lived, so he might find a noble
tomb after death. *^ Great princes affected great monuments; and
the fair and larger urns contained no vulgar ashes, which makes

* Olai Wormii Monumenta et Antiquitat. Dan.

* Adolphus Cyprius in Annal. Sleswic. urnis adeo abundabat
collis, G*c.

* In Oxfordshire, Camden.

* In Cheshire, Twinus de rebus Albionicis,
** In Norfolk, Hollingshead.

** Matt, xxiii.
** Euripides,
xcvii n

that disparity in those which time discover cth among us. The
present urns were not of one capacity, the largest containing above
a gallon, some not much above half that measure; nor all of one
figure, wherein there is no strict conformity in the same or different
countries; observable from those represented by Casalius, Bosio,
and others, though all found in Italy; while many have handles,
ears,andlongnecks,butmostimitateacircularfigure,in a spherical
and round composure; whether from any mystery, best duration
or capacity, were but a conjecture. But the common form with
necks was a proper figure, making our last bed like our first ; nor
much unlike the urns of our nativity while we lay in the nether
part of the earth,* and inward vault of our microcosm. Many urns
are red, these but of a black colour somewhat smooth, and dully
sounding, which begat some doubt, whether they were burnt,
or only baked in oven or sun, according to the ancient way, in
many bricks, tiles, pots, and testaceous works; and, as the word
testa is properly to be taken, when occurring without addition
and chiefly intended by Pliny, when he commendeth bricks and
tiles of two years old, and to make them in the spring. Nor only
these concealed pieces, but the open magnificence of antiquity,
ran much in the artifice of clay. Hereof the house of Mausolus
was built, thus old Jupiter stood in the Capitol, and the statua of
Hercules, made in the reign of Xarquinius Priscus, was extant
in Pliny's days. And such as declined burning or funeral urns,
affected coffins of clay, according to the mode of Pythagoras, a
way preferred by Varro. But the spirit of great ones was above
these circumscriptions, affecting copper, silver, gold, and por-
phyry urns, wherein Severus lay, after a serious view and sentence
on that which should contain him.^ Some of these urns were
thought to have been silvered over, from sparklings in several
pots, with small tinsel parcels ; uncertain whether from the earth,
or the first mixture in them.

Amongtheseurns wecould obtain no goodaccountof their cover-
ings ; only one seemed arched over with some kind of brick- work.
Of those found at Buxton, some were covered with flints, some,
in other parts, with tiles ; those at Yarmouth Caster were closed
with Roman bricks , and some have proper earthen covers adapted
and fitted to them. But in the Homerical urn of Patroclus, what-
ever was the solid tegument, we find the immediate covering to

* Psal. Ixiii.

^ Xw^jjcrety TovavOpODirov, ov % oiKOVjAevq owe e^&y»/<Tev, — Dion.

xcviii

be a purple piece of silk : and such as had no covers might have
the earth closely pressed into them, after which disposure were
probably some of these, wherein we found the bones and ashes
half mortared unto the sand and sides of the urn, and some long
roots of quich, or dog's-grass, wreathed about the bones.
No lamps, included liquors, lacrymatories, or tear bottles, at-
tended these rural urns, either as sacred unto the manes, or pas-
sionate expressions of their surviving friends. While with rich
flames, and hired tears, they solemnized their obsequies, and in
the most lamented monuments made one part of their inscrip-
tions.* Some find sepulchral vessels containing liquors, which
time hath incrassated into jellies. For, besides these lacrymatories,
notable lamps, with vessels of oils, and aromatical liquors, at-
tended noble ossuaries; and some yet retaining a vinosity* and
spirit in them, which, if any have tasted, they have far exceeded
the palates of antiquity. Liquors not to be computed by years of
annual magistrates, but by great conjunctions and the fatal periods
of kingdoms. * The draughts of consulary date were but crude
unto these, and Opimian wine* but in the must unto them.
In sundry graves and sepulchres we meet with rings, coins, and
chalices. Ancient frugality was so severe, that they allowed no
gold to attend the corpse, but only that which served to fasten their
teeth.** Whether the opaline stone in this urn were burnt upon
the finger of the dead, or cast into the fire by some affectionate
friend, it will consist with either custom. But other incinerable
substances were found so fresh, that they could feel no singe from
fire. These, upon view, were judged to be wood; but, sinking
in water, and tried by the fire, we found them to be bone or ivory.
In their hardness and yellow colour they most resembled box,
which, in old expressions, found the epithet of eternal,*^ and per-
haps in such conservatories might have passed uncorrupted.
That bay leaves were found green in the tomb of S. Humbert,*1*'

* Cum lacrymis posuere.

* Lazius.

* About five hundred years. — Plato.

* Vinum Opiminianum annorum centum. — Petron.

** 12 Tabul. 1. xi. De Jure Sacro. Neve aurum addito, ast quoi

auro denies vincti erunt id cum illo sepelire urereve, sine fraude

esto.

** Plin. 1. xvi. Inter tyXa aa-a^ numeral Theophrastus.

** Surius.

xcix

after an hundred and fifty years, was looked upon as miraculous.
Remarkable it -was unto old spectators, that the cypress of the
temple of Diana lasted so many hundred years. The wood of
the ark, and olive-rod of Aaron, were older at the captivity; but
the cypress of the ark of Noah was the greatest vegetable of an-
tiquity, if Josephus were not deceived by some fragments of it
in his days : to omit the moor logs and fir trees found under-ground
in many parts of England; the undated ruins of winds, floods, or
earthquakes, and which in Flanders still show from what quarter
they fell, as generally lying in a north-east position.*
But though we found not these pieces to be wood, according to
first apprehensions, yet we missed not altogether of somewoody
substance ; for the bones were not so clearly picked but some
coals were found amongst them; away to make wood perpetual,
and a fit associate for metal, whereon was laid the foundation of
the great Ephesian temple, and which were made the lasting tests
of old boundaries and landmarks. Whilst we look on these, we
admire not observations of coals found fresh after four hundred
years.* In a long-deserted habitation * even egg-shells have been
found fresh, not tending to corruption.

In the monument of King Childerick the iron relicks were found
all rusty and crumbling into pieces; but our little iron pins, which
fastened the ivory works, held well together, and lost not their
magnetical quality, though wanting a tenacious moisture for the
firmer union of parts; although it be hardly drawn into fusion,
yet that metal soon submitteth unto rust and dissolution. In the
brazen pieces we admired not the duration, but the freedom from
rust, and ill savour, upon the hardest attrition ; but now exposed
unto the piercing atoms of air, in the space of a few months, they
begin to spot and betray their green entrails. We conceive not
these urns to have descended thus naked as they appear, or to
have entered their graves without the old habit of flowers. The
urn of Philopcemen was so laden with flowers and ribbons, that
it afforded no sight of itself . The rigid Lycurgus allowed olive and
myrtle. The Athenians might fairly except against the practice
of Democritus, to be buried up in honey, as fearing to embezzle
a great commodity of their country, and the best of that kind in
Europe. But Plato seemed too frugally politick, who allowed

* Gorop. Becanus in Niloscopio.

* Of Beringuccio nella pyrotechnia.

* At Elmeham.

no larger monument than would contain four heroick verses, and
designed the most barren ground for sepulture : though we can'-
not commend the goodness of that sepulchral ground which was
set at no higher rate than the mean salary of Judas. Though the
earth had confounded the ashes of these ossuaries, yet the bones
were so smartly burnt, that some thin plates of brass were found
half melted among them. Whereby we apprehend they were not
of the meanest carcases, perfunctorily fired, as sometimes in mili'-
tary, and commonly in pestilence, burnings ; or after the manner
of abject corpses, huddled forth and carelessly burnt, without the
Esquiline Port at Rome; which was an affront continued upon
Tiberius, while they but half burnt his body,* and in the amphi'-
theatre, according to the custom in notable malefactors ; whereas
Nero seemed not so much to fear his death as that his head should
be cut off and his body not burnt entire.

Some, finding many fragments of skulls in these urns, suspected
a mixture of bones ; in none we searched was there cause of such
conjecture, though sometimes they declined not that practice. —
The ashes of Domitian^ were mingled with those of Julia; of
Achilles with those of Patroclus. All urns contained not single
ashes ; without confused burnings they affectionately com*-
pounded their bones ; passionately endeavouring to continue
their living unions. And when distance of death denied such
conjunctions, unsatisfied affections conceived some satisfaction
to be neighbours in the grave, to lie urn by urn, and touch but in
their manes. And many were so curious to continue their living
relations, that they contrived large and family urns, wherein the
ashes of their nearest friends and kindred might successively be
received, * at least some parcels thereof, while their collateral
memorials lay in minor vessels about them.
Antiquity held too light thoughts from objects of mortality,
while some drew provocatives of mirth from anatomies,* and
jugglers showed tricks with skeletons. When fiddlers made not
so pleasant mirth as fencers, and men could sit with quiet stom~

* Sueton. in vit2 Tib. Et in amphitheatre semiustulandum, not.
Casaub.

* Sueton. in vitt Domitian.

* See the most learned and worthy Mr. M. Casaubon upon
Antoninus.

x Sic erimus cuncti, G-C. Ergo dum vivimus vivamus.

ci

achs, 'while hanging was played before them.* Old considera-
tions made few mementos by skulls and bones upon their monu-
ments. In the Egyptian obelisks and hieroglyphical figures it is
not easy to meet with bones. The sepulchral lamps speak no-
thing less than sepulture, and in their literal draughts prove often
obscene and antick pieces. Where we find D.M.^ it is obvious
to meet with sacrificing pateras and vessels of libation upon old
sepulchral monuments. In the Jewish hypogaeum * and subter-
ranean cell at Rome, was little observable beside the variety of
lamps and frequent draughts of the holy candlestick. In authen-
tick draughts of Anthony and Jerome we meet with thigh bones
and death's-heads; but the cemeterial cells of ancient Christians
and martyrs were filled with draughts of Scripture stories; not
declining the flourishes of cypress, palms, and olive, and the
mystical figures of peacocks, doves, and cocks; but iterately
affecting the portraits of Enoch, Lazarus, Jonas, and the vision
of Ezekiel, as hopeful draughts, and hinting imagery of the resur-
rection, which is the life of the grave, and sweetens our habita-
tions in the land of moles and pismires.

Gentile inscriptions precisely delivered the extent of men's lives,
seldom the manner of their deaths, which history itself so often
leaves obscure in the records of memorable persons. There is
scarce any philosopher but dies twice or thrice in Laertius ; nor
almost any life without two or three deaths in Plutarch ; which
makes the tragical ends of noble persons more favourably re-
sented by compassionate readers who find some relief in the
election of such differences.

The certainty of death is attended with uncertainties, in time,
manner, places. The variety of monuments hath often obscured
true graves ; and cenotaphs confounded sepulchres. For beside
their real tombs,manyhavefoundhonoraryandemptysepulchres.
The variety of Homer's monuments made him of various
countries. Euripides x had his tomb in Attica, but his sepulture

* 'Ayuvov TraiQiv. A barbarous pastime at feasts, when men stood
upon a rolling globe, with their necks in a rope and a knife in
their hands, ready to cut it -when the stone was rolled away;
wherein if they failed, they lost their lives, to the laughter of their
spectators. — Athenxus.

* Diis manibus.

* Bosio.

* Pausan. in Atticis.
cii

in Macedonia. AndScvcrus* found his real sepulchre in Rome,
but his empty grave in Gallia.

He that lay in a golden urn^ eminently above the earth, was not
like to find the quiet of his bones. Many of these urns were broke
by a vulgar discoverer in hope of enclosed treasure. The ashes of
Marcellus*- were lost above ground, upon the like account.
Where profit hath prompted, no age hath wanted such miners.
For which the most barbarous expilators found the most civil
rhetorick: — " Gold once out of the earth is no more due unto it;
what was unreasonably committed to the ground, is reasonably
resumed from it; let monuments and rich fabricks, not riches,
adorn men's ashes. The commerce of the living is not to be trans-
ferred unto the dead; it is not injustice to take that which none
complains to lose, and no man is wronged where no man is
possessor/'

What virtue yet sleeps in this terra damnata and aged cinders,
were petty magic to experiment. These crumbling relicks and
long fired particles superannuate such expectations; bones, hairs,
nails, and teeth of the dead, were the treasures of old sorcerers.
In vain we revive such practices; present superstition too visibly
perpetuates the folly of our forefathers, wherein unto old obser-
vation * this island was so complete, that it might have instructed
Persia.

Plato's historian of the other world lies twelve days incorrupted,
while his soul was viewing the large stations of the dead. How-
to keep the corpse seven days from corruption by anointing and
washing, without exenteration, were an hazardable piece of art,
in our choicest practice. How they made distinct separation of
bones and ashes from fiery admixture, hath found no historical
solution ; though they seemed to make a distinct collection, and
overlooked not Pyrrhus his toe. Some provision they might make
by fictile vessels, coverings, tiles, or flat stones, upon and about
the body (and in the same field, not far from these urns, many
stones were found under ground), as also by careful separation

* Lamprid. in vit. Alexand. Severi.

* Trajanus. — Dion.

* Plut. in vit. Marcelli. The commission of the Gothish King
Theodoric for finding out sepulchral treasure. — Cassiodor. var.
1.4.

* Britannia hodie earn attonite celebrat tantis ceremoniis ut de^
disse Persis videri possit. — Plin. I, 29.

ciii

of extraneous matter, composing and raking up the burnt bones
with forks, observable in that notable lamp of Galvanus.*
Martianus, who had the sight of the vas ustrinum^ or vessel
wherein they burnt the dead, found in the E squiline field at Rome,
might have afforded clearer solution. But their insatisfaction
herein begat that remarkable invention in the funeral pyres of
some princes, by incombustible sheets made with a texture of
asbestos, incremable flax, or salamander's wool, which preserved
their bones and ashes incommixed.

How the bulk of a man should sink into so few pounds of bones
and ashes, may seem strange unto any who considers not its con-
stitution, and how slender a mass will remain upon an open and
urging fire of the carnal composition. Even bones themselves,
reduced into ashes, do abate a notable proportion. And consist-
ing much of a volatile salt, when that is fired out, make a light
kind of cinders. Although their bulk be disproportionate to
their weight, when the heavy principle of salt is fired out, and
the earth almost only remaineth; observable in sallow, which
makes more ashes than oak, and discovers the common fraud of
selling ashes by measure, and not by ponderation.
Some bones make best skeletons, * some bodies quick and
speediest ashes. Who would expect a quick flame from hydro-
pica! Heraclitus / The poisoned soldier when his belly brake,
put out two pyres in Plutarch. * But in the plague of Athens,**
one private pyre served two or three intruders ; and the Saracens
burnt in large heaps, by the king of Castile,*^ showed how little
fuel sufficeth. Though the funeral pyre of Patroclus took up an
hundred foot,** a piece of an old boat burnt Pompey ; and if the
burthen of Isaac were sufficient for an holocaust, a man may carry
his own pyre.

* To be seen in Licet, de reconditis veterum lucernis (p. 599,
fol. 1653).

* Typograph. Roma ex Martiano. Erat et vas ustrinum appel-
latum, quod in eo cadavera comburerentur. Cap. de Campo
Esquilino.

* Old bones according to Lyserus. Those of young persons not
tall nor fat according to Columbus.

* In vh2 Grace.
** Thucydides.
%* Laurent. Valla.

cv

From animals are drawn good burning lights, and good medi-
cincs against burning.* Though the seminal humour seems of a
contrary nature to fire, yet the body completed proves a com-
bustible lump, wherein fire finds flame even from bones, and
some fuel almost from all parts ; though the metropolis of hu-
midity* seems least disposed unto it, which might render the
skulls of these urns less burned than other bones. But all flies or
sinks before fire almost in all bodies : when the common liga-
ment is dissolved, the attenuable parts ascend, the rest subside
in coal, calx, or ashes.

To burn the bones of the king of Edom for lime,*4 seems no ir-
rational ferity; but to drink of the ashes of dead relations,* a
passionate prodigality. He that hath the ashes of his friend,
hath an everlasting treasure ; where fire taketh leave, corruption
slowly enters. In bones well burnt, fire makes a wall against
itself; experimented in cupels, and tests of metals, which consist
of such ingredients. What the sun compoundeth, fire analyzeth,
not transmuteth. That devouring agent leaves almost always a
morsel for the earth, whereof all things are but a colony ; and
which, if time permits, the mother element will have in their
primitive mass again.

He that looks for urns and old sepulchral relicks, must not seek
them in the ruins of temples, where no religion anciently placed
them. These were found in a field, according to ancient custom,
in noble or private burial ; the old practice ofthe Canaanites, the
family of Abraham, and the burying-place of Joshua, in the
borders of his possessions; and also agreeable unto Roman
practice to bury by highways, whereby their monuments were
under eye; — memorials of themselves, and mementos of mortality
unto living passengers ; whom the epitaphs of great ones were
fain to beg to stay and look upon them, — a language though
sometimes used, not so proper in church inscriptions.** The
sensible rhetorick of the dead, to exemplarity of good life, first
admitted the bones of pious men and martyrs within church walls,
which in succeeding ages crept into promiscuous practice: while

* Alb. Ovpr.

* The brain. Hippocrates.

* Amos. ii. i.

* As Artemisia of her husband Mausolus.
** Siste viator.

cv o

Constantino was peculiarly favoured to be admitted into the
church porch, and the first thus buried in England, was in the days
of Cuthred.

Christians dispute how their bodies should He in the grave.* In
urnal interment they clearly escaped this controversy. Though
we decline the religious consideration, yet in cemeterial and
narrower burying-places, to avoid confusion and cross-position,
a certain posture were to be admitted: which even Pagan civility
observed. The Persians lay north and south ; the Megarians and
Phoenicians placed their heads to the east; the Athenians, some
think, towards the west, which Christians still retain. And Beda
will have it to be the posture of our Saviour. That he was cruci-
fied with his face toward the west, we will not contend with tra-
dition and probable account ; but we applaud not the hand of
the painter, in exalting his cross so high above those on either
side : since hereof we find no authentic account in history, and
even the crosses found by Helena, pretend no such distinction
from longitude or dimension.

To be gnawed out of our graves, to have our skulls made drink-
ing-bowls, and our bones turned into pipes, to delight and sport
our enemies,are tragical abominations escaped in burning burials.
Urnal interments and burnt relicks lie not in fear of worms, or to
be an heritage for serpents. In carnal sepulture, corruptions seem
peculiar unto parts ; and some speak of snakes out of the spinal
marrow. But while -we suppose common worms in graves, 'tis
not easy to find any there ; few in churchyards above a foot deep,
fewer or none in churches though in fresh-decayed bodies.
Teeth, bones, and hair, give the most lasting defiance to corrup-
tion. In an hydropical body, ten years buried in the churchyard,
we met with a fat concretion, where the nitre of the earth, and
the salt and lixivious liquor of the body, had coagulated large
lumps of fat into the consistence of the hardest Castile soap,
whereof part remaineth with us. After a battle with the Persians,
the Roman corpses decayed in few days, while the Persian bodies
remained dry and uncorrupted. Bodies in the same ground do
not uniformly dissolve, nor bones equally moulder; whereof in
the opprobrious disease, we expect no long duration. The body
of the Marquis of Dorset seemed sound and handsomely cere-
clothed, that after seventy-eight years was found uncorrup-

* Kirkmannus de funer.
cvi

ted.* Common tombsprescrve notbeyondpowderiafirmercon-
sistcnce and compagc of parts might be expected from arefaction,
deep burial, or charcoal. The greatest antiquities of mortal bodies
may remain in putrefied bones, whereof, though -we take not in
the pillar of Lot's wife, or metamorphosis of Ortelius,* some may
be older than pyramids, in the putrefied relicks of the general
inundation. When Alexander opened the tomb of Cyrus, the
remaining bones discovered his proportion, whereof urnal frag-
ments afford but a bad conjecture, and have this disadvantage
of grave interments, that they leave us ignorant of most personal
discoveries. For since bones afford not only rectitude and sta-
bility but figure unto the body, it is no impossible physiognomy
to conjecture at fleshy appendencies, and after what shape the
muscles and carnous parts might hang in their full consistencies.
A full-spread cariola* shows a well-shaped horse behind;
handsome formed skulls give some analogy to fleshy resemblance.
A critical view of bones makes a good distinction of sexes. Even
colour is not beyond conjecture, since it is hard to be deceived
in the distinction of Negroes' skulls.* Dante's** characters are to
be found in skulls as well as faces. Hercules is not only known
by his foot. Other parts make out their comproportions and in-
ferences upon whole or parts. And since the dimensions of the
head measure the whole body, and the figure thereof gives con-

* Of Thomas, Marquis of Dorset, whose body being buried
1 53O* was 1 608, upon the cutting open of the cerecloth, found
perfect and nothing corrupted, the flesh not hardened, but in
colour, proportion, and softness like an ordinary corpse newly
to be interred. — Burton's Descript. of Leicestershire.

* In his map of Russia.

* That part in the skeleton of a horse, which is made by the
haunch-bones.

* For their extraordinary thickness.

** The poet Dante, in his view of Purgatory, found gluttons so

meagre, and extenuated, that he conceited them to have been in

the siege of Jerusalem, and that it was easy to have discovered

Homo or Omo in their faces : M being made by the two lines of

their cheeks, arching over the eye-brows to the nose, and their

sunk eyes making O O which makes up Omo.

Paren 1'occhiaje anella senza gemme :

Chi, nel viso degli uomini legge omo,

Bene avria quivi conosciuto l'emme. — Purgat. xxiii. 31.

cvii

jecture of the principal faculties, physiognomy outlives ourselves,
and ends not in our graves.

Severe contemplators, observing these lasting relicks, may think
them good monuments of persons past, little advantage to future
beings ; and, considering that power which subdueth all things
unto itself, that can resume the scattered atoms, or identify out of
any thing, conceive it superfluous to expect a resurrection out
of relicks: but the soul subsisting, other matter, clothed with due
accidents, may salve the individuality. Yet the saints, we observe,
arose from graves and monuments about the holy city. Some
think the ancient patriarchs so earnestly desired to lay their bones
in Canaan, as hoping to make a part of that resurrection ; and,
though thirty miles from Mount Calvary, at least to lie in that
region whicn should produce the first fruits of the dead. And if,
according to learned conjecture, the bodies of men shall rise
where their greatest relicks remain, many are not like to err in
the topography of their resurrection, though their bones or
bodies be after translated by angels into the field of Ezekiel's
vision, or as some will order it, into the valley of judgment, or
Jehosaphat.*
CHAPTER IV.

CHRISTIANS have handsomely glossed the deformity of
death by careful consideration of the body, and civil rites which
take off brutal terminations: and though they conceived all re*-
parable by a resurrection, cast not off all care of interment. And
since the ashes of sacrifices burnt upon the altar of God were
carefully carried out by the priests, and deposed in a clean field;
since they acknowledged their bodies to be the lodging of Christ,
and temples of the Holy Ghost, they devolved not all upon the
sufficiency of soul-existence; and therefore with long services
and full solemnities, concluded their last exequies, wherein to
all distinctions the Greek devotion seems most pathetically cere-
monious.*

Christian invention hath chiefly driven at rites, which speak
hopes of another life, and hints of a resurrection. And if the ancient
Gentiles held not the immortality of their better part, and some
subsistence after death, in several rites, customs, actions, and ex-
pressions, they contradicted their own opinions : wherein De-
mocritus went high, even to the thought of a resurrection, as

* Tirin. in Ezek.

* Rituale Graecum, opera" J. Goar, in officio exequiarum.
cviii

scoff ingly recorded by Pliny.* What can be more express than
the expression of Phocylides.//fiv Or who would expect from
Lucretius * a sentenceof Ecclesiastes t Before Plato could speak,
the soul had wings in Homer, which fell not, but flew out of the
body into the mansions of the dead ; who also observed that hand-
some distinction of Demas and Soma, for the body conjoined to
the soul, and body separated from it. Lucian spoke much truth
in jest, when he said that part of Hercules which proceeded from
Alcmena perished, that from Jupiter remained immortal. Thus
Socrates * was content that his friends should bury his body, so
they would not think they buried Socrates; and, regarding only
his immortal part, was indifferent to be burnt or buried. From
such considerations, Diogenes might contemn sepulture, and,
being satisfied that the soul could not perish, grow careless of
corporal interment. The Stoicks, who thought the souls of wise
men had their habitation about the moon, might make slight ac-
count of subterraneous deposition ; whereas the Pythagoreans
and transcorporating philosophers, who were to be often buried,
held great care of their interment. And the Platonicks rejected
not a due care of the grave, though they put their ashes to un-
reasonable expectations, in their tedious term of return and long
set revolution.

Men have lost their reason in nothing so much as their religion,
wherein stones and clouts make martyrs ; and, since the religion
of one seems madness unto another, to afford an account or ra-
tional of old rites requires no rigid reader. That they kindled the
pyre aversely, or turning their face from it, was an handsome
symbol of unwilling ministration. That they washed their bones
with wine and milk; that the mother wrapped them in linen, and
dried them in her bosom, the first fostering part and place of their
nourishment; that they opened their eyes towards heaven before
they kindled the fire, as the place of their hopes or original, were no
improper ceremonies. Their last valediction,** thrice uttered by
the attendants, was also very solemn, and somewhat answered

* Similis .... reviviscendipromissaDemocritovanitas,quinon
revixit ipse. Quae, malum, ista dementia est, iterari vitam morte /
— Plin. 1. vii. c. 58.

* Cedit enim retro de terra" quod fuit ante in terram, €JG. — Lucret.

* Plato in Phaed.

** Vale, vale, nos te ordine quo natura permittet sequemur.
cix

by Christians, who thought it too little, if they threw not the earth
thrice upon the interred body. That, in strewing their tombs, the
Romans affected the rose ; the Greeks amaranthus and myrtle :
that the funeral pyre consisted of sweet fuel, cypress, fir, larix,
yew, and trees perpetually verdant, lay silent expressions of their
surviving hopes. Wherein Christians, who deck their coffins
with bays, have found a more elegant emblem; for that it, seem-
ing dead, will restore itself from the root, and its dry and exsuc-
cous leaves resume their verdure again; which, if we mistake not,
we have also observed in furze. Whether the planting of yew in
churchyards hold not its original from ancient funeral rites, or as
an emblem of resurrection, from its perpetual verdure, may also
admit conjecture.

They made use of musick to excite or quiet the affections of their
friends, according to different harmonies. But the secret and
symbolical hint was the harmonical nature of the soul ; which,
delivered from the body, went again to enjoy the primitive har-
mony of heaven, from whence it first descended; which, accord-
ing to its progress traced by antiquity, came down by Cancer, and
ascended by Capricornus.

They burnt not children before their teeth appeared, as appre-
hending their bodies too tender a morsel for fire, and that their
gristly bones would scarce leave separable relicks after the pyral
combustion. That they kindled not fire in their houses for some
days after was a strict memorial of the late afflicting fire. And
mourning without hope, they had an happy fraud against ex-
cessive lamentation, by a common opinion that deep sorrows
disturbed their ghosts.*

That they buried their dead on their backs, or in a supine posi-
tion, seems agreeable unto profound sleep, and common posture
of dying; contrary to the most natural way of birth; nor unlike
our pendulous posture, in the doubtful state of the womb. Dio-
genes was singular, who preferred a prone situation in the grave;
and some Christians^ like neither, who decline the figure of rest,
and make choice of an erect posture.

That they carried them out of the world with their feet forward,
not inconsonant unto reason, as contrary unto the native posture
of man, and his production first into it ; and also agreeable unto
the opinions, while they bid adieu unto the world, not to look

* Tu manes ne laedc meos.

* Russians, 6>c.
ex

again upon it; -whereas Mahometans -who think to return to a
delightful life again, are carried forth with their heads forward,
and looking toward their houses.

They closed their eyes, as parts which first die, or first discover
the sad effects of death. But their iterated clamations to excitate
their dying or dead friends, or revoke them unto life again, was
a vanity of affection; as not presumably ignorant of critical tests
of death, by apposition of feathers, glasses, and reflection of
figures, which dead eyes represent not : which, however not
strictly verifiable in fresh and warm cadavers, could hardly elude
the test, in corpses of four or five days.*

That they sucked in the last breath of their expiring friends, was
surely a practice of no medical institution, but a loose opinion
that the soul passed out that way, and a fondness of affection,
from some Pythagorical foundation,* that the spirit of one body
passed into another, which they wished might be their own.
That they poured oil upon the pyre, was a tolerable practice,
while the intention rested in facilitating the accension. But to
place good omens in the quick and speedy burning, to sacrifice
unto the winds for a dispatch in this office, was a low form of
superstition.

The archimime, or jester, attending the funeral train, and imita-
ting the speeches, gesture, and manners of the deceased, was too
light for such solemnities, contradicting their funeral orations and
doleful rites of the grave.

That they buried a piece of money with them as a fee of the
Elysian ferryman, was a practice full of folly. But the ancient
custom of placing coins in considerable urns, and the present
practice of burying medals in the noble foundations of Europe,
are laudable ways of historical discoveries, in actions, persons,
chronologies ; and posterity will applaud them.
We examine not the old laws of sepulture, exempting certain
persons from burial or burning. But hereby we apprehend that
these were not the bones of persons planet-struck or burnt with
fire from heaven ; no relicks of traitors to their country, self- killers,
or sacrilegious malefactors ; persons in old apprehension un-
worthy of the earth ; condemned unto the Tartarus of hell, and
bottomless pit of Pluto, from whence there was no redemption.
Nor were only many customs questionable in order to their ob-

* At least by some difference from living eyes.

* Francesco Perucci, Pompe funebri.
cxi

sequies, but also sundry practices, fictions, and conceptions, dis-
cordant or obscure, of their state and future beings; whether
unto eight or ten bodies of men to add one of a woman, as being
more inflammable, and unctuously constituted for the better py ral
combustion, were any rational practice ; or whether the com-
plaint of Periander's wife be tolerable, that wanting her funeral
burning, she suffered intolerable cold in hell, according to the
constitution of the infernal house of Pluto, wherein cold makes a
great part of their tortures; it cannot pass without some question.
Why the female ghosts appear unto Ulysses, before the heroes
and masculine spirits, — why the Psyche or soul of Tiresias is of
the masculine gender,* who, being blind on earth, sees more than
all the rest in hell ; why the funeral suppers consisted of eggs,
beans, smallage, and lettuce, since the dead are made to eat as-
phodels* about the Elysian meadows, — why, since there is no
sacrifice acceptable, nor any propitiation for the covenant of the
grave, men set up the deity of Morta, and fruitlessly adored
divinities without ears, it cannot escape some doubt.
The dead seem all alive in the human Hades of Homer, yet
cannot well speak,prophesy, or know the living,except they drink
blood, wherein is the life of man. And therefore the souls of
Penelope's paramours, conducted by Mercury, chirped like bats,
and those w^hich followed Hercules, madeanoise but like a flock
of birds.

The departed spirits know things past and to come ; yet are ig-
norant of things present. Agamemnon foretells what should
happen unto Ulysses ; yet ignorantly enquires what is become
of his own son. The ghosts are afraid of swords in Homer ; yet
Sibylla tells ^Eneas in Virgil, the thin habit of spirits was beyond
the force of weapons. The spirits put off their malice with their
bodies, and Caesar and Pompey accord in Latin hell; yet Ajax,
in Homer, enduresnotaconference with Ulysses: andDeiphobus
appears all mangled in Virgil's ghosts, yet we meet with perfect
shadows among the wounded ghosts of Homer.
Since Charon in Lucian applauds his condition among the dead,
whether it be handsomely said of Achilles, that living contemner
of death, that he had rather be a ploughman's servant, than em-
peror of the dead t How Hercules his soul is in hell, and yet in
heaven; and Julius his soul in a star, yet seen by ^Eneas in hellr'

In Homer: — ^X^ ^j&uou Teipeo-iao a-KtJTTTpov

In Lucian.

cx

— except the ghosts were but images and shadows of the soul,
received in higher mansions, according to the ancient division
of body, soul, and image, or simulacrum of them both. The
particulars of future beings must needs be dark unto ancient
theories, which Christian philosophy yet determines but in a
cloud of opinions. A dialogue between two infants in the womb
concerning the state of this world, might handsomely illlustrate
our ignorance of the next, whereof methinks we yet discourse in
Plato's den, and are but embryo philosophers.
Pythagoras escapes in the fabulous hell of Dante,* among that
swarm of philosophers, wherein, whilst we meet with Plato and
Socrates, Cato is to be found in no lower place than purgatory.
Among all the set, Epicurus is most considerable, whom men
make honest without an Elysium, who contemned life without
encouragement of immortality, and making nothing after death,
yet made nothing of the king of terrors.

Were the happiness of the next world as closely apprehended
as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live; and unto such
as consider none hereafter, it must be more than death to die,
which makes us amazed at those audacities that durst be nothing
and return into their chaos again. Certainly such spirits as could
contemn death, when they expected no better being after, would
have scorned to live, had they known any. And therefore we
applaud not the judgment of Machiavel, that Christianity makes
men cowards, or that with the confidence of but half '-dying, the
despised virtues of patience and humility have abased the spirits
of men, whichPagan principles exalted; but rather regulated the
wildness of audacities, in the attempts, grounds, and eternal se-
quels of death; wherein men of the boldest spirits are often pro--
digiously temerarious. Nor can we extenuate the valour of
ancient martyrs who contemned death in the uncomfortable
scene of their lives, and in their decrepit martyrdoms did pro-
bably lose not many months of their days, or parted with life
when it was scarce worth the living. For (beside that long time
past holds no consideration unto a slender time to come) they had
no small disadvantage from the constitution of old age, which
naturally makes men fearful, and complexionally superannuated
from the bold and courageous thoughts of youth and fervent
years. But the contempt of death from corporal animosity, pro ~
moteth not our felicity. They may sit in the orchestra, and noblest

* Del Inferno, cant. 4.

cxiii n

scats of heaven, who have held up shaking hands m the fire, and
humanly contended for glory.

Meanwhile Epicurus liesdeep in Dante's hell, wherein we meet
with tombs enclosing souls which denied their immortalities.
But whether the virtuous heathen, -who lived better than he spake,
or erring in the principles of himself, yet lived above philosophers
of more specious maxims, lie so deep as he is placed, at least so
low as not to rise against Christians, who believing or knowing
that truth, have lastingly denied it in their practice and conversa-
tion — were a query too sad to insist on.

But all or most apprehensions rested in opinions of some future
being, which, ignorantly or coldly believed, begat those per-
verted conceptions, ceremonies, sayings, which Christians pity
or laugh at. Happy are they which live not in that disadvantage
of time, when men could say little for futurity, but from reason :
whereby the noblest minds fell often upon doubtful deaths, and
melancholy dissolutions. With these hopes, Socrates warmed
his doubtful spirits against that cold potion ; and Cato, before
he durst give the fatal stroke, spent part of the night in reading
the Immortality of Plato, thereby confirming his wavering hand
unto the animosity of that attempt.

It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to
tell him he is at the end of his nature ; or that there is no further
state to come, unto which this seems progressional, and other-
wise made in vain. Without this accomplishment, the natural
expectation and desire of such a state were but a fallacy in nature;
unsatisfied considerators would quarrel the justice of their con-
stitutions, and rest content that Adam had fallen lower; where-
by, by knowing no other original, and deeper ignorance of
themselves, they might have enjoyed the happiness of inferior
creatures, who in tranquillity possess their constitutions, as having
not the apprehension to deplore their own natures, and, being
framed below the circumference of these hopes, or cognition of
better being, the wisdom of God hath necessitated their con-
tentment : but the superior ingredient and obscured part of our-
selves, whereto all present felicities afford no resting content-
ment, will be able at last to tell us, we are more than our present
selves and evacuate such hopes in the fruition of their own ac-
complishments.
CHAPTERV.

NOW since these dead bones have already out-lasted the living
ones of Methuselah, and in a yard under ground, and thin walls
cxiv

of clay, out- worn all the strong and specious buildings above it ;
and quietly rested under the drums and tramplings of three con-
quests : what prince can promise such diuturnity unto his relicks,
or might not gladly say,
Sic ego componi versus in ossa velim / *

Time, which antiquates antiquities, and hath an art to make dust
of all things, hath yet spared these minor monuments.
In vain we hope to be known by open and visible conservatories,
when to be unknown was the means of their continuation, and
obscurity their protection. If they died by violent hands, and
were thrust into their urns, these bones become considerable, and
some old philosophers -would honour them,* whose souls they
conceivedmostpure, which werethussnatchedfromtheirbodies,
and to retain a stronger propension unto them; whereas they
weariedly left a languishing corpse, and with faint desires of re-
union. If they fell by long and aged decay, yet wrapt up in the
bundle of time, they fall into indistinction, and make but one blot
with infants. If we begin to die when we live, and long life be
but a prolongation of death, our life is a sad composition; we live
with death, and die not in a moment. How many pulses made
up the life of Methuselah, were work for Archimedes : common
counters sum up the life of Moses his man.*1 Our days become
considerable, like petty sums, by minute accumulations; where
numerous fractions make up but small round numbers ; and our
days of a span long, make not one little finger.*
If the nearness of our last necessity brought a nearer conformity
unto it, there were a happiness in hoary hairs, and no calamity in
half-senses. But the long habit of living indisposeth us for dying ;
when avarice makes us the sport of death, when even David grew
politickly cruel, and Solomon could hardly be said to be the
wisest of men. But many are too early old, and before the date
of age. Adversity stretcheth our days, misery makes Alcmena's
nights,** and time hath no wings unto it. But the most tedious

* Tibullus.

^ OraculaChaldaicacumscholiisPsellietPhethonis. B/p \i TTOVTW
o-w/xa ^v^ai KaOapwrarat . Vi corpus relinquentium animae purissimae.

* In the Psalm of Moses.

* According to the ancient arithmetick of the hand, wherein the
little finger of the right hand contracted, signified an hundred. —
Pierius in Hieroglyph.

** One night as long as three,
cxv

being is that which can unwish itself, content to be nothing, or
never to have been, which was beyond the malcontent of Job,
who cursed not the day of his life, but his nativity ; content to
have so far been, as to have a title to future being, although he
had lived here but in an hidden slate of life, and as it were an
abortion.

What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed
when he hid himself among women, though puzzling ques-
tions,* are not beyond all conjecture. What time the persons of
these ossuaries entered the famous nations of thedead^and slept
with princes and counsellors, might admit a wide solution. But
who were the proprietaries of these bones, or what bodies these
ashes made up, were a question above antiquarism; not to be
resolved by man, nor easily perhaps by spirits, except we consult
the provincial guardians, or tutelary otservators. Had they made
as good provision for their names, as they have done for their
relicks, they had not so grossly erred in the art of perpetuation.
But to subsist in bones, and be but pyramidally extant, is a fallacy
in duration. Vain ashes which in the oblivion of names, persons,
times, and sexes, have found unto themselves a fruitless continua-
tion, and only arise unto late posterity, as emblems of mortal
vanities, antidotes against pride, vain-glory, and madding vices.
Pagan vain-glories which thought the world might last for ever,
had encouragement for ambition; and, finding no Atropos unto
the immortality of their names, were never dampt with the ne-
cessity of oblivion. Even old ambitions had the advantage of
ours, in the attempts of their vain-glories, who acting early, and
before the probable meridian of time, have by this time found
great accomplishment of their designs, whereby the ancient
heroes have already outlasted their monuments, and mechanical
preservations. But in this latter scene of time, we cannot expect
such mummies unto our memories, when ambition may fear the
prophecy of Elias,* and Charles the Fifth can never hope to live
within two Methuselahs of Hector.*
And therefore, restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our memo-

* The puzzling questions of Tiberius unto grammarians. —
Marcel. Donatus in Suet.

** KXura eOvea veKpwv. Hom. Job.

* That the world may last but six thousand years.

* Hector's fame lasting above two lives of Methuselah, before
that famous prince was extant.

cxvi

ries unto present considerations seems a vanity almost out of date,
and superannuated piece of folly. We cannot hope to live so long
in our names, as some have done in their persons. One face of
Janus holds no proportion unto the other. 'Tis too late to be
ambitious. The great mutations of the world are acted, or time
may be too short for our designs. To extend our memories by
monuments, whose death we daily pray for, and whose duration
we cannot hope, without injury to our expectations in the advent
of the last day, were a contradiction to our beliefs. We whose
generations are ordained in this setting part of time, are provi-
dentially taken off from such imaginations ; and, being necessi-
tated to eye the remaining particle of futurity, are naturally con-
stituted unto thoughts of the next world, and cannot excusably
decline the consideration of that duration, which maketh pyramids
pillars of snow, and all that's past a moment.
Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortal
right-lined circle* must conclude and shut up all. There is no
antidote against the opium of time, which temporally considereth
all things : our fathers find their graves in our short memories,
and sadlytell us howwe maybe buriedin our survivors. Grave-
stones tell truth scarce forty years.4* Generations pass while some
trees stand, and old families last not three oaks. To be read by
bare inscriptions like many in Gruter,^ to hope for eternity by
enigmatical epithets or first letters of our names, to be studied by
antiquaries, who we were, and have new names given us like
many of the mummies,* are cold consolations unto the students
of perpetuity, even by everlasting languages.
To be content that times to come should only know there was
such a man, not caring whether they knew more of him, was a
frigid ambition in Cardan; ** disparaging his horoscopal inclina-
tion and judgment of himself. Who cares to subsist like Hippo-
crates' patients, or Achilles' horses in Homer, under naked
nominations, without deserts and noble acts, which are the bal-

* The character of death.

* Old ones being taken up, and other bodies laid under them.

* Gruteri Inscriptiones Antiquae.

Which men showin several countries, giving them what names
they please; and unto some the names of the old Egyptian kings,
out of Herodotus.

** Cuperem notum esse quod sim, non opto ut sciatur qualis
sim. — Card, in vita propria.
cxvii

sam of our memories, the entelechia and soul of our subsistences t
To be nameless in worthy deeds, exceeds an infamous history.
The Canaanitish woman lives more happily without a name,
than Herodias with one. And who had not rather have been the
good thief, than Pilate/

But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and
deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of
perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the pyramids S
Herostratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana, he is almost
lost that built it. Time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse,
confounded that of himself. In vain we compute our felicities by
the advantage of our good names, since bad have equal durations,
andThersites is like to live as long as Agamemnon. Who knows
•whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more
remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in
the known account of time / Without the favour of the ever-
lasting register, the first man had been as unknown as the last,
and Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle.
Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to
be as though they had not been, to be found in the register of
God, not in the record of man. Twenty-seven names make up
the first story before the flood, and the recorded names ever since
contain not one living century. The number of the dead long
exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the
day, and who knows when was the equinox S Every hour adds
unto that current arithmetick, which scarce stands one moment.
And since death must be the Lucina of life, and even Pagans*
could doubt, whether thus to live were to die; since our longest
sun sets at right descensions, and makes but winter arches, and
therefore it cannot be long before we lie down in darkness, and
have our light in ashes ; * since the brother of death daily haunts
us with dying mementos, and time that grows old in itself, bids
us hope no long duration; — diuturnity is a dream and folly of
expectation.*

* Euripides.

* According to the custom of the Jews, who place a lighted
wax-candle in a pot of ashes by the corpse. — Leo.

* Cf. MS. Sloan. 1848, fol. 194. "Large are the treasures of
oblivion, and heaps of things in a state next to nothing almost
numberless ; much more is buried in silence than recorded, and
the largest volumes are but epitomes of what hath been. The
cxviii

Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares
with memory a great part even of our living beings ; we slightly
remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave
but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and
sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are fables.
Afflictions induce callosities ; miseries are slippery, or fall like
snow upon us, which notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity.
To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful of evils past, is a
merciful provision in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of
our few and evil days, and, our delivered senses not relapsing into
cutting remembrances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge
of repetitions. A great part of antiquity contented their hopes of
subsistency with a transmigration of their souls, — a good way to
continue their memories, while having the advantage of plural
successions, they could not but act something remarkable in such
variety of beings, and enjoying the fame of their passed selves,
make accumulation of glory unto their lastdurations. Others, rather
than belost in the uncomfortable night of nothing, were content to
recede into the common being, and make one particle of the public
soul of all things, which was no more than to return into their un-
known and divine original again. Egyptian ingenuity was more
unsatisfied, contriving their bodies in sweet consistencies, to at~
tendthe return of their souls. Butall was vanity,* feedingthe wind,
and folly. The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time
hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become mer--
chandise, Mizraim cures wounds , and Pharaoh is sold for balsams.

account of time began with night, and darkness still attendeth
it. Some things never come to light ; many have been delivered ;
but more hath been swallowed in obscurity and the caverns of
oblivion. How much is as it were in vacuo, and will never be
cleared up, of those long living times when men could scarce
remember themselves young; and men seem to us not ancient
but antiquities, when they (lived) longer in their lives than we
can now hope to do in our memories ; when men feared not apo-
plexies and palsies after seven or eight hundred years ; when living
was so lasting that homicide might admit of distinctive qualifi-
cations from the age of the person, and it might seem a lesser injury
to kill a man at eight hundred than at forty, and when life was so
well worth the living that few or none would kill themselves."
* Omnia vanitas et pastio venti, vow avepov KOI {36<nai<rist ut olim
Aquila et Symmachus. v. Drus. Eccles.
cxix

In vain do individuals hope for immortality, or any patent from
oblivion, in preservations below the moon; men have been de-
ceived even in their flatteries, above the sun, and studied conceits
to perpetuate their names in heaven. The various cosmography
of that part hath already varied the names of contrived constel-
lations; Nimrod is lost in Orion, and Osyris in the Dog-star.
While we look for incorruption in the heavens, we find they are
but like the earth; — durable in their main bodies, alterable in their
parts; whereof, beside comets and new stars, perspectives begin
to tell tales. And the spots that wander about the sun, with
Phaeton's favour, would make clear conviction.
There is nothing strictly immortal, but immortality. Whatever
hath no beginning, maybe confident of no end ; — which is the pe-
culiar of that necessary essence that cannot destroy itself ; — and the
highest strain of omnipotency,to be so powerfully constituted as
not to suffer even from the power of itself : all others have a depen-
dent being and within the reach of destruction. But the sufficiency
of Christian immortality frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality
of either state after death, makes a folly of posthumous memory.
Godw^ho can only destroy our souls,andhathassuredourresurrec-
tion, either of our bodies or names hath directly promised no dura-
tion. Wherein there is so much of chance,that the boldest expec-
tants have found unhappy frustration; and to hold long subsist-
ence seems but a scape in oblivion. But man is a noble animal,
splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing nativi-
ties and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of
bravery in the infamy of his nature.

Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us.
A small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after
death, while men vainly affected precious pyres, and to burn like
Sardanapalus ; but the wisdom of funeral laws found the folly
of prodigal blazes, and reduced undoing fires unto the rule of
sober obsequies, wherein few could be so mean as not to pro vide
wood, pitch, a mourner, and an urn.*

* According to the epitaph of Rufus and Beronica, in Gruterus.

nee ex

Eorum bonis plus inventum est, quam
Quod sufficeret ad emendam pyram
Et picem quibus corpora cremarentur,
Et praefica conducta, et olla empta.

cxx

Five languages secured not the epitaph of Gordianus.* The
man of God lives longer without a tomb than any by one,invisibly
interred by angels, and adjudged to obscurity, though not with"
out some marks directing human discovery. Enoch and Elias,
without either tomb or burial, in an anomalous state of being, are
the great examplesof perpetuity, in their longandlivingmemory,
in strict account being still on this side death, and having a late
part yet to act upon this stage of earth. If in the decretory term of
the world we shall not all die but be changed, according to re~
ceived translation, the last day will make butfew graves; at least
quick resurrectionswill anticipate lasting sepultures. Some graves
will be opened before they be quite closed, and Lazarus be no
wonder. When many that feared to die, shall groan that they can
die but once, the dismal state isthesecond and li ving death, when
life puts despair on the damned; when men shall wish the
coverings of mountains, not of monuments, and annihilations
shall be courted.

While some have studied monuments, others have studiously
declined them, and some have been so vainly boisterous, that
they durst not acknowledge their graves; wherein Alaricus^
seems most subtle, who had a river turned to hide his bones at
the bottom. Even Sylla, that thought himself safe in his urn,
could not prevent revenging tongues, and stones thrown at his
monument. Happy are they whom privacy makes innocent, who
deal so with men in this world, that they are not afraid to meet
them in the next; who, when they die, make no commotion
among the dead, and are not touched with that poetical taunt
of Isaiah. *

Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the irregularities of vain*-
glory,andwild enormities of ancient magnanimity. Butthemost
magnanimous resolution rests in the Christian religion, which
trampleth upon pride, and sits on the neck of ambition, humbly
pursuing that infallible perpetuity, unto which all others must
diminish their diameters, and be poorly seen in angles of contin-
gency. *
Pious spirits who passed their days in raptures of futurity, made

* In Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Egyptian, Arabic; defaced by Lici-
nius the. emperor.

* Jornandes de rebus Geticis.

* Isa. xiv. 1 6, G*c.

* Angulus contingently, the least of angles
cxxi q

little more of this world, than the -world that was before it, while
they lay obscure in the chaos of preordination, and night of their
fore^beings. And if any have been so happy as truly to under ~
stand Christian annihilation, ecstasies, exolution, liquefaction,
transformation, the kiss of the spouse, gustation of God, and
ingression into the divine shadow, they have already had an
handsome anticipation of heaven ; the glory of the world is surely
over, and the earth in ashes unto them.

To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their productions,
to exist in their names and predicament of chimeras, was large
satisfaction unto old expectations, and made one part of their
Elysiums. But all this is nothing in the metaphy sicks of true belief.
To live indeed, is to be again ourselves, which being not only
an hope, but an evidence in noble believers, 'tis all one to lie in
St. Innocent's * churchyard, as in the sands of Egypt. Ready to
be any thing, in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six
foot as the moles of Adrianus.*
— tabesne cadavera solvat,
An rogus, haud refert. — Lucan.

* In Paris, where bodies soon consume.

* A stately mausoleum or sepulchral pile, built by Adrianus in
Rome, where now standeth the castle' of St. Angelo.

cxxn

A LETTER TO A FRIEND, UPON OCCASION OF
THE DEATH OF HIS INTIMATE FRIEND.

GIVE me leave to wonder that news of this nature should have
such heavy wings that you should hear so little concerning your
dearest friend, and that I must make that unwilling repetition to
tell you, ad portam rigidos calces extendit, that he is dead and
buried, and by this time no puny among the mighty nations of
the dead; for though he left this world not very many days past,
yet every hour you know largely addeth unto that dark society ;
and considering the incessant mortality of mankind, you cannot
conceive there dieth in the whole earth so few as a thousand an
hour.

Although at this distance you had no early account or particular
of his death, yet your affection may cease to wonder that you had
not some secret sense or intimation thereof by dreams, thought-
ful whisperings, mercurisms, airy nuncios or sympathetical in-
sinuations, which many seem to have had at the death of their
dearest friends: for since we find in that famous story, that spirits
themselves were fain to tell their fellow's at a distance that the
great Antonio was dead, we have a sufficient excuse for our ig-
norance in such particulars, and must rest content with the com-
mon road, and Appian way of knowledge by information.
Though the uncertainty of the end of this world hath confounded
all human predictions ; yet they who shall live to see the sun and
moon darkened and the stars to fall from heaven, will hardly be
deceived in the advent of the last day; and therefore strange it is,
that the common fallacy of consumptive persons who feel not
themselves dying, and therefore still hope to live, should also
reach their friends in perfect health and judgment; — that you
should be so little acquainted with Plautus' sick complexion, or
thatalmostan Hippocratical face should not alarum you to higher
fears, or rather despair, of his continuation in such an emaciated
state, wherein medical predictions fail not, as sometimes in acute
diseases, and wherein 'tis as dangerous to be sentenced by a
physician as a judge.

Upon my first visit I was bold to tell them who had not let fall
all hopes of his recovery, that in my sad opinion he was not like
to behold a grasshopper, much less to pluck another fig; and in
no long time after seemed to discover that odd mortal symptom
in him not mentioned by Hippocrates, that is, to lose his own
face, and look like some of his near relations; for he maintained
not his proper countenance, but looked like his uncle, the lines
of whose face lay deep and invisible in his healthful visage be-
fore : for as from our beginning we tun through variety of looks,
cxxv

before we come to consistent and settled faces; so before our
end, by sick and languishing alterations, we put on new visages:
and in our retreat to earth, may fall upon such looks which from
community of seminal originals were before latent in us.
He was fruitlessly put in hope of advantage by change of air, and
imbibing the pure aerial nitre of these parts; and therefore, being
so far spent, he quickly found Sardinia in Tivoli, and the most
healthful air of little effect, where death had set his broad arrow;
for he lived not unto the middle of May, and confirmed the ob-
servation of Hippocrates of that mortal time of the year when the
leaves of the fig-tree resemble a daw' s claw. He is happily seated
who lives in places whose air, earth, and water, promote not the
infirmities of his weaker parts, or is early removed into regions
that correct them. He that is tabidly inclined, were unwise to
pass his days in Portugal: cholical persons will find little comfort
in Austria or Vienna : he that is weak-legged must not be in love
with Rome, nor an infirm head with Venice or Paris. Death hath
not only particular stars in heaven, but malevolent places on earth,
which single out our infirmities, and strike at our weaker parts ;
in which concern, passager and migrant birds have the great ad-
vantages ; who are naturally constituted for distant habitations,
whom no seas nor places limit, but in their appointed seasons
will visit us from Greenland and Mount Atlas, and as some think,
even from the Antipodes.

Though we could not have his life, yet we missed not our desires
in his soft departure, which was scarce an expiration; and his end
not unlike his beginning, when the salient point scarce affords a
sensible motion, and his departure so like unto sleep, that he scarce
needed the civil ceremony of closing his eyes ; contrary unto the
common way, wherein death draws up, sleep lets fall the eye-
lids. With what strife and pains we came into the world we know
not; but 'tis commonly no easy matter to get out of it: yet if it
could be made out, that such who have easy nativities have
commonly hard deaths, and contrarily ; his departure was so easy,
that we might justly suspect his birth was of another nature, and
that some Juno sat cross-legged at his nativity.
Besides his soft death, the incurable state of his disease might
somewhat extenuate your sorrow, who know that monsters but
seldom happen, miracles more rarely in physic. Angelus Vic-
torius gives a serious account of a consumptive, hectical, phthi-
sical woman, who was suddenly cured by the intercession of
Ignatius. We read not of any in scripture who in this case applied
cxxvi

unto our Saviour, though some may be contained in that large
expression, that He went about Galilee healing all manner of
sickness and all manner of diseases. Amulets, spells, sigils, and
incantations, practised in other diseases, are seldom pretended
in this ; and we find no sigil in the Archidoxis of Paracelsus to
cure an extreme consumption or marasmus, which, if other
diseases fail, will put a period unto long livers, and at last makes
dust of all. And therefore the Stoics could not but think that the
fiery principle would wear out all the rest, and at last make an
end of the world, which notwithstanding without such a linger-
ing period the Creator may effect at His pleasure: and tomakean
end of all things on earth, and our planetical system of the world,
He need but put out the sun.

I was not so curious to entitle the stars unto any concern of his
death, yet could not but take notice that he died when the moon
was in motion from the meridian ; at which time an old Italian
long ago would persuade me that the greatest part of men died:
but herein I confess I could never satisfy my curiosity; although
from the time of tides in places upon or near the sea, there may
be considerable deductions; and Pliny hath an odd and remark-
able passage concerning the death of men and animals upon the
recess or ebb of the sea. However, certain it is, he died in the
dead and deep part of the night, when Nox might be most ap-
prehensibly said to be the daughter of Chaos, the mother of sleep
and death according to old genealogy; and so went out of this
world about that hour when our blessed Saviour entered it, and
about what time many conceive He will return again unto it.
Cardan hath a peculiar and no hard observation from a man's
hand to know whether he was born in the day or night, which I
confess holdeth in my own. And Scaliger to that purpose hath
another from the tip of the ear: most men are begotten in the
night, animals in the day ; but whether more persons have been
born in the night or the day, were a curiosity undecidable, though
more have perished by violent deaths in the day; yet in natural
dissolutions both times may hold an indifferency, at least but con-
tingent inequality. The whole course of time runs out in the
nativity and death of things ; which whether they happen by
succession or coincidence, are best computed by the natural not
artificial day.

That Charles the Fifth was crowned upon the day of his nativity,
it being in his own power so to order it, makes no singular ani-
madversion; but that he should also take King Francis prisoner
cxxvii

upon that day, was an unexpected coincidence, which made the
same remarkable. Antipater, who had an anniversary feast every
year upon his birth-day, needed no astrological revolution to
know what day he should die on. When the fixed stars have
made a revolution unto the points from whence they first set out,
some of the ancients thought the world would have an end;
which was a kind of dying upon the day of his nativity. Now
the disease prevailing and swiftly advancing about the time of
his nativity, some were of opinion that he would leave the "world
on the day he entered into it : but this being a lingering disease,
and creeping softly on, nothing critical was found or expected,
and he died not before fifteen days after. Nothing is more com-
mon with infants than to die on the day of their nativity, to be-
hold the worldly hours, and but the fractions thereof; and even
to perish before their nativity in the hidden world of the womb,
and before their good angel is conceived to undertake them. But
in persons who out-live many years, and when there are no less
than three hundred and sixty- five days to determine their lives in
every year ; that the first day should make the last, that the tail of
the snake should return into its mouth precisely at that time, and
they should wind up upon the day of their nativity, is indeed a
remarkable coincidence, which, though astrology hath taken
witty pains to salve, yet hath it been very wary in making pre-
dictions of it.

In this consumptive condition and remarkable extenuation, he
came to be almost half himself, and left a great part behind him,
which he carried not to the grave. And though that story of
Duke John Ernestus Mansfield be not so easily swallowed, that
at his death his heart was found not to be so big as a nut; yet if
the bones of a good skeleton weigh little more than twenty
pounds, his inwards and flesh remaining could make no bouffage,
but a light bit for the grave. I never more lively beheld the
starved characters of Dante in any living face ; an aruspex might
have read a lecture upon him without exenteration, his flesh being
so consumed, that he might, in a manner, have discerned his
bowels without opening of him: so that to be carried, sextet
cervice, to the grave, was but a civil unnecessity ; and the com-
plements of the coffin might outweigh the subject of it.
Omnibonus Ferrarius in mortal dysenteries of children looks for
a spot behind the ear: in consumptive diseases some eye the
complexion of moles; Cardan eagerly views the nails, some the
lines of the hand, the thenar or muscle of the thumb ; some are
cxxviii

so curious as to observe the depth of the throat-pit, how the
proportion varieth of the small of the legs unto the calf, or the
compass of the neck unto the circumference of the head : but all
these, with many more, were so drowned in a mortal visage, and
last face of Hippocrates, that a weak physiognomist might say
at first eye, this was a face of earth, and that Morta had set her
hard seal upon his temples, easily perceiving what caricatura
draughts death makes upon pined faces, and unto what an un-
known degree a man may live backward.

Though the beard be only made a distinction of sex, and sign of
masculine heat by Ulm'us, yet the precocity and early growth
thereof in him, was not to be liked in reference unto long life.
Lewis, that virtuous but unfortunate king of Hungary, who lost
his life at the battle of Mohacz, was said to be born without a
skin, to have bearded at fifteen, and to have shown some grey
hairs about twenty; from whence the diviners conjectured that
he would be spoiled of his kingdom, and have but a short life :
but hairs make fallible predictions, and many temples early grey
have outlived the psalmist's period. Hairs which have most
amused me have not been in the face or head, but on the back,
and not in men but children, as I long ago observed in that en-
demial distemper of little children in Languedoc, called the mor-
gellons, wherein they critically break out with harsh hairs on their
backs, which takes off the unquiet symptoms of the disease, and
delivers them from coughs and convulsions.*
The Egyptian mummies that I have seen, have had their mouths
open, and somewhat gaping, which affordeth a good opportunity
to view and observe their teeth, wherein 'tis not easy to find any
wanting or decayed; and therefore in Egypt, where one man
practised but one operation, or the diseases but of single parts, it
must needs be a barren profession to confine unto that of draw-

* Cf. MS. Sloan. 1 862 : — " Though hairs afford but fallible con-
jectures, yet we cannot but take notice of them. They grow not
equally on bodies after death: women's skulls afford moss as well
as men's, and the best I have seen was upon a woman's skull,
taken up and laid in a room after twenty-five years' burial.
Though the skin be made the place of hairs, yet sometimes they
are found on the heart and in ward parts. The plica or gluey locks
happen unto both sexes, and being cut off will come again : but
they are wary of cutting off the same, for fear of head-ache and
other diseases."

cxxix

ing of teeth, and little better than to have been tooth --drawer unto
King Pyrrhus, who had but two in his head. How the banyans
of India maintain the integrity of those parts, I find not particu-
larly observed; who notwithstanding have an advantage of their
preservation by abstaining from all flesh, and employing their
teeth in such food unto which they may seem at first framed, from
their figure and conformation : but sharp and corroding rheums
had so early mouldered thoserocksand hardest parts of his fabric,
that a man might well conceive that his years were never like to
double or twice tell over his teeth. Corruption had dealt more
severely with them than sepulchral fires and smart flames with
those of burnt bodies of old; for in the burnt fragments of urns
which I have enquired into, although I seem to find few incisors
or shearers, yet the dog teeth and grinders do notably resist those
fires.*

* Cf. MS. Sloan. 1862: — "Affection had so blinded some of his
nearest relations, as to retain some hope of a postliminious life, and
that he might come to life again, and therefore would not have
him coffined before the third day. Some such virbiasses, I confess,
we find in story, and one or two I remember myself, but they lived
not long after. Some contingent reanimations are to be hoped in
diseases wherein the lamp of life is but puffed out and seemingly
choaked, and not where the oil is quite spent and exhausted.
Though Nonnus will have it a fever, yet of what diseases Lazarus
first died, is uncertain from the text, as his second death from good
authentic history; but since some persons conceived to be dead
do sometimes return again unto evidence of life, that miracle was
wisely managed by our Saviour; for had he not been dead four
days and under corruption, there had not wanted enough who
would have cavilled the same, which the scripture now puts out
of doubt : and tradition also confirmeth that he lived thirty years
after, and being pursued by the Jews, came by sea into Provence,
by Marseilles, with Mary Magdalen, Maximinus, and others ;
where remarkable places carry their names unto this day. But to
arise from the grave to return again into it, is but an uncomfort-
able reviction. Few men would be content to cradle it once again ;
except a man can lead his second life better than the first, a man
may be doubly condemned for living evilly twice, which were
but to make the second death in scripture the third, and to ac-
cumulate in the punishment of two bad livers at the last day. To
have performed the duty of corruption in the grave, to live again
cxxx

In the years of his childhood he had languished under the disease
of his country, the rickets ; after which, notwithstanding, many
have become strong and active men ; but whether any have at-
tained unto very great years, the disease is scarce so old as to
afford good observation. Whether the children of the English
plantations be subject unto the same infirmity, may be worth
the observing. Whether lameness and halting do still increase
among the inhabitants of Rovignoinlstria, I know not; yet scarce
twenty years ago Monsieur du Loyr observed that a third part of
that people halted: but too certain it is that the rickets increas-
eth among us; the small-pox grows more pernicious than the
great: the king's purse knows that the king's evil grows more
common. Quartan agues are become no strangers in Ireland;
more common and mortal in England: and though the ancients
gave that disease very good words, yet now that bell makes no
strange sound which rings out for the effect thereof.*
Some think there were few consumptions in the old world, when
men lived much upon milk ; and that the ancient inhabitants of
this island were less troubled with coughs when they went
naked and slept in caves and woods, than men now in chambers
and featherbeds. Plato will tell us, that there was no such disease
as a catarrh in Homer's time, and that it was but new in Greece
in his age. Polydore Virgil delivereth that pleurisies were rare in
England, who lived but in the days of Henry the Eighth. Some
will allow no diseases to be new, others think that many old ones
are ceased: and that such which are esteemed new, will have
but their time : however, the mercy of God hath scattered the
great heap of diseases, and not loaded any one country with all :
some may be new in one country which have been old in another.

as far from sin as death, and arise like our Saviour for ever, are the
only satisfactions of well-weighed expectations."
* MS. Sloan. 1862 adds: — "Some I observed to wonder how, in
his consumptive state, his hair held on so well, without that con-
siderable defluvium which is one of the last symptoms in such
diseases ; but they took not notice of a mark in his face, which if
he had lived was a probable security against baldness (if the ob-
servation of Aristotle will hold, that persons are less apt to be bald
who are double-chinned), nor of the various and knotted veins
in his legs, which they that have, in the same author's assertions,
are less disposed to baldness. (According as Theodorus Gaza
renders it: though Scaliger renders the text otherwise.)"
cxxxi

New discoveries of the earth discover new diseases : for besides
the common swarm, there are endemial andlocal infirmities proper
unto certain regions, which in the whole earth make no small
number : and if Asia, Africa, and America, should bring in their
list, Pandora's box would swell, and there must be a strange path -
ology.

Most men expected to find a consumed kell, empty and bladder-
like guts, livid and marbled lungs, and a withered pericardium
in this exsuccous corpse: but some seemed too much to wonder
that two lobes of his lungs adhered unto his side ; for the like I
have often found in bodies of no suspected consumptions or diffi-
culty of respiration. And the same more often happeneth in men
than other animals : and some think in women than in men : but
the most remarkable I have met with, was in a man, after a cough
of almost fifty years, in whom all the lobes adhered unto the pleura,
and each lobe unto another ; who having also been much troubled
with the gout, brake the rule of Cardan, and died of the stone in
the bladder. Aristotle makes a query, why some animals cough,
as man ; some not, as oxen. If coughing be taken as it consisteth
of a natural and voluntary motion, including expectoration and
spitting out, it maybe as proper unto man as bleeding at the nose;
otherwise we find that Vegetius and rural writers have not left
so many medicines in vain against the coughs of cattle; and men
who perish by coughs die the death of sheep, cats, and lions :
and though birds have no midriff, yet we meet with divers reme-
dies in Arrianus against the coughs of hawks. And though it might
be thoughtthatallanimals who have lungs do cough; yet in ceta-
ceous fishes, who have large and strong lungs, the same is not
observed ; nor yet in oviparous quadrupeds : and in the greatest
thereof, the crocodile, although we read much of their tears, we
find nothing of that motion.

From the thoughts of sleep, when the soul was conceived nearest
unto divinity, the ancients erected an art of divination, wherein
while they too widely expatiated in loose and inconsequent con-
jectures, Hippocrates wisely considered dreams as they presaged
alterations in the body, and so afforded hints to ward the preserva-
tion of health,andprevention of diseases; and thereinwas so serious
as to advise alteration of diet, exercise, sweating, bathing, and
vomiting; and also so religious as to order prayers and supplica-
tions unto respective deities, in good dreams unto Sol, Jupiter cce-
lestis, Jupiter opulentus, Minerva, Mercurius, and Apollo ; in bad
unto Tellus and the heroes,
cxxxii

And therefore I could not but take notice how his female friends
were irrationally curious so strictly to examine his dreams, and
in this low state to hope for the phantasms of health. He was
now past the healthful dreams of the sun, moon, and stars, in their
clarity and proper courses. 'Xwas too late to dream of flying, of
limpid fountains, smooth waters, white vestments, and fruitful
green trees, which are the visions of healthful sleeps, and at good
distance from the grave.

And they were also too deeply dejected that he should dream of
his dead friends, inconsequently divining, that he would not be
long from them ; for strange it was not that he should sometimes
dream of the dead, whose thoughts run always upon death; be-
side, to dream of the dead, so they appear not in dark habits, and
take nothing away from us, in Hippocrates' sense was of good
signification : for we live by the dead, and every thing is or must
be so before it becomes our nourishment. And Cardan, who
dreamed that he discoursed with his dead father in the moon, made
thereof no mortal interpretation : and even to dream that we are
dead, was no condemnable phantasm in old oneiro-criticism, as
having a signification of liberty, vacuity from cares, exemption
and freedom from troubles unknown unto the dead.
Some dreams I confess may admit of easy and feminine exposi-
tion ; he who dreamed that he could not see his right shoulder,
might easily fear to lose the sight of his right eye; he that before
a journey dreamed that his feet were cut off, had a plain warning
not to undertake his intended journey . But why to dream of lettuce
should presage some ensuing disease, why to eat figs should sig-
nify foolish talk, why to eat eggs great trouble, and to dream of
blindness should be so highly commended, according to the on-
eirocritical verses of Astrampsychus and Nicephorus, I shall leave
unto your divination.

He was willing to quit the world alone and altogether, leaving
no earnest behind him for corruption or after-grave, having small
content in that common satisfaction to survive or live in another,
but amply satisfied that his disease should die with himself, nor
revive in a posterity to puzzle physic, and make sad mementos of
their parent hereditary. Leprosy awakes not sometimes before
forty, the gout and stone often later ; but consumptive and tabid
roots sprout more early, and at the fairest make seventeen years
of our life doubtful before that age. They that enter the world
with original diseases as well as sin, have not only common mor-
tality but sick traductions to destroy them, make commonly short
cxxxiii

courses, and live not at length but in figures; so that a sound
Caesarean nativity may out-last a natural birth, and a knife may
sometimes make way for a more lasting fruit than a midwife;
which makes so few infants now able to endure the old test of
the river, and many to have feeble children who could scarce
have been married at Sparta, and those provident states who
studied strong and healthful generations; which happen but con-
tingently in mere pecuniary matches or marriages made by the
candle, wherein notwithstanding there is little redress to be hoped
from an astrologer or a lawyer, and a good discerning physician
were like to prove the most successful counsellor.
Julius Scaliger, who in a sleepless fit of the gout could make two
hundred verses in a night, would have but five plain words upon
his tomb. And this serious person, though no minor wit, left the
poetry of his epitaph unto others : either unwilling to commend
himself or to be judged by a distich, and perhaps considering
how unhappy great poets have been in versifying their own
epitaphs: wherein Petrarca, Dante, and Ariosto, have so un-
happily failed, that if their tombs should out-last their works,
posterity would find so little of Apollo on them, as to mistake
them for Ciceronian poets.

In this deliberate and creeping progress unto the grave, he was
somewhat too young and of too noble a mind, to fall upon that
stupid symptom observable in divers persons near their journey's
end, and which may be reckoned among the mortal symptoms
of their last disease; that is, to become more narrow-minded,
miserable, and tenacious, unready to part with anything, when
they are ready to part with all, and afraid to want when they have
no time to spend; meanwhile physicians, -who know that many
are mad but in a single depraved imagination, and one prevalent
decipiency ; and that beside and out of such single deliriums a
man may meet with sober actions and good sense in bedlam;
cannot but smile to see the heirs and concerned relations gratu-
lating themselves on the sober departure of their friends; and
though they behold such mad covetous passages, content to think
they die in good understanding, and in their sober senses.
Avarice, which is not only inndelity but idolatry, either from
covetous progeny or questuary education,had no root in his breast,
who made good works the expression of his faith, and was big
with desires unto public and lasting charities; and surely where
good wishes and charitable intentions exceed abilities, theorical
beneficency may be more than a dream. They build not castles
cxxxiv

in the air who would build churches on earth: and though they
leave no such structures here, may lay good foundations in heaven.
In brief, his life and death were such, that I could not blame them
who wished the like, and almost to have been himself; almost,
I say ; for though we may wish the prosperous appurtenances of
others, or to be another in his happy accidents, yet so intrinsical
is every man unto himself, that some doubt maybe made, whether
any would exchange his being, or substantially become another
man.

He had wisely seen the world at home and abroad, and thereby
observed under what variety men are deluded in the pursuit of
that which is not here to be found. And although he had no
opinion of reputed felicities below, and apprehended men widely
out in the estimate of such happiness ; yet his sober contempt of
the world wrought no Democritism or Cynicism, no laughing
or snarling at it, as well understanding there are not felicities in
this world to satisfy a serious mind ; and therefore, to soften the
stream of our lives, we are fain to take in the reputed contentions
of this world, to unite with the crowd in their beatitudes, and to
make ourselves happy by consortion, opinion, or cO'-existima-
tion: for strictly to separate from received and customary felicities,
and to confine unto the rigour of realities, were to contract the
consolation of our beings unto too uncomfortable circumscrip'-
tions.

Not to fear death, nor desire it, was short of his resolution: to be
dissolved, and be with Christ, was his dying ditty. He conceived
his thread long, in no long course of years, and when he had
scarce out^lived the second life of Lazarus ; esteeming it enough
to approach the years of his Saviour, who so ordered his own
human state, as not to be old upon earth.

But to be content with death may be better than to desire it; a
miserable life may make us wish for death, but a virtuous one to
rest in it ; which is the advantage of those resolved Christians,
who looking on death not only as the sting, but the period and
end of sin, the horizon and isthmus between this life and a better,
and the death of this world but as a nativity of another, do con--
tentedly submit unto the common necessity, and envy not Enoch
or Elias.

Not to be content with life is the unsatisfactory state of those
-who destroy themselves; who being afraid to live, run blindly
upon their own death, which no man fears by experience: and
the Stoics had a notable doctrine to take away the fear thereof;
cxxxv

that is, in such extremities, to desire that which is not to be avoided,
and wish what might be feared; and so made evils voluntary,
and to suit with their own desires, which took off the terror of
them.

But the ancient martyrs were not encouraged by such fallacies ;
who, though they feared not death, were afraid to be their own
executioners; and therefore thought it more wisdom to crucify
their lusts than their bodies, to circumcise than stab their hearts,
and to mortify than kill themselves.

His willingness to leave this world about that age, when most
men think they may best enjoy it, that paradoxical unto worldly
ears, was not strange unto mine, who have so often observed,
that many, though old, oft stick fast unto the world, and seem to
be drawn like Cacus* oxen, backward, with great struggling and
reluctancy unto the grave. The long habit of living makes mere
men more hardly to part with life, and all to be nothing, but what
is to come. To live at the rate of the old world, when some could
scarce remember themselves young,may afford no better digested
death than a more moderate period. Many would have thought
it an happiness to have had their lot of life in some notable con-
junctures of ages past; but the uncertainty of future times hath
tempted few to make a part in ages to come. And surely, he that
hath taken the true altitude of things, and rightly calculated the
degenerate state of this age, is not like to envy those that shall
live in the next, much less three or four hundred years hence,
when no man can comfortably imagine what face this world will
carry: and therefore since every age makes a step unto the end of
all things, and the scripture affords so hard a character of the last
times ; quiet minds will be content with their generations, and
rather bless ages past, than be ambitious of those to come.
Though age had set no seal upon his face, yet a dim eye might
clearly discover fifty in his actions; and therefore, since wisdom
is the grey hair, and an unspotted life old age ; although his years
came short, he might have been said to have held up with longer
livers, and to have been Solomon's old man. And surely if we
deduct all those days of our life which we might wish unlived,
and which abate the comfort of those we now live; if we reckon
up only those days which God hath accepted of our lives, a life
of good years will hardly be a span long: the son in this sense
may out-live the father, and none be climacterically old. He that
early arriveth unto the parts and prudence of age, is happily old
without the uncomfortable attendants of it; and 'tis superfluous
cxxxvi

to live unto grey hairs, when in a precocious temper we antici~
pate the virtues of them. In brief, he cannot be accounted young
who out'-liveth the old man. He that hath early arrived unto the
measure of a perfect stature in Christ, hath already fulfilled the
prime and longest intention of his being: and one day lived after
the perfect rule of piety, is to be preferred before sinning im*-
mortality.

Although he attained not unto the years of his predecessors, yet
he wanted not those preserving virtues which confirm the thread
of weaker constitutions. Cautelous chastity and crafty sobriety
were far from him; those jewels were paragon, without flaw,
hair, ice, or cloud in him : which affords me a hint to proceed in
these good wishes, and few mementos unto you.*

The Letter closes with certain precepts which Sir Thomas
Browne afterwards used as a foundation for his Christian
Morals.

cxxxvn

CHRISTIAN MORALS. PUBLISHED FROM THE
ORIGINAL AND CORRECT MANUSCRIPT OF
THE AUTHOR, BY JOHN JEFFERY, D.D., ARCH-
DEACON OF NORWICH.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE DAVID, EARL OF
BUCHAN, VISCOUNT AUCHTERHOUSE, LORD
CARDROSS AND GLENDOVACHIE, ONE OF THE
LORDS COMMISSIONERS OF POLICE, AND LORD
LIEUTENANT OFTHE COUNTIES OF STIRLING
AND CLACKMANNAN, IN NORTH BRITAIN.

MY LORD, — The honour you have done our family obligeth
us to make all just acknowledgments of it : and there is no form
of acknowledgment in our power, more worthy of your lord-
ship's acceptance, than this dedication of the last work of our
honoured and learned father. Encouraged hereunto by the
knowledge we have of your lordship's judicious relish of uni-
versal learning, and sublime virtue, we beg the favour of your
acceptance of it, which -will very much oblige our family in
general, and her in particular, who is,

My Lord,
Your lordship's most humble Servant,

ELIZABETH LITTLETON.

cxl

THE PREFACE.

IF any one, after he has read Religio Medici, and the ensuing
discourse, can make doubt whether the same person was the
author of them both, he may be assured, by the testimony of
Mrs. Littleton, Sir Thomas Browne's daughter, who lived with
her father when it was composed by him ; and who, at the time,
read it written by his own hand ; and also by the testimony of
others (of whom I am one) who read the manuscript of the
author, immediately after his death, and who have since read the
same; from which it hath been faithfully and exactly transcribed
for the press. The reason why it was not printed sooner is, be-
cause it was unhappily lost, by being mislaid among other manu-
scripts, for which search was lately made in the presence of the
Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, of which his Grace, by letter,
informed Mrs. Littleton, when he sent the manuscript to her.
There is nothing printed in the discourse, or in the short notes,
but what is found in the original manuscript of the author, except
only where an oversight had made the addition or transposition
of some words necessary.

JOHN JEFFERY,

Archdeacon of Norwich.

cxli

CHRISTIAN MORALS.

PART THE FIRST.

TREAD softly and circumspectly in this funambulatory track and
narrow path of goodness : pursue virtue virtuously :* leaven not
good actions, nor render virtue disputable. Stain not fair acts with
foul intentions; maim not uprightness by halting concomitances,
nor circumstantially deprave substantial goodness.
Consider * whereabout thou art in Cebes's table, or that old philo -
sophical pinax of the life of man: whether thou art yet in the road
of uncertainties ; whether thou hast yet entered the narrow gate,
got up the hill and asperous way, which leadeth unto the house
of sanity; or taken that purifying potion from the hand of sincere
erudition, which may send thee clear and pure away unto a vir-
tuous and happy life.

In this virtuous voyage of thy life hull not about like the ark,
without the use of rudder, mast, or sail, and bound for no port.
Let not disappointment cause despondency, nor difficulty des-
pair. Think not that you are sailing from Lima to Manilla, when
you may fasten up the rudder, and sleep before the wind ; but
expect rough seas, flaws, and contrary blasts : and 'tis well, if by
many cross tacks and veerings, you arrive at the port; for we sleep
in lions' skins in our progress unto virtue, and we slide not but
climb unto it.

Sit not down in the popular forms and common level of virtues.
Offer not only peace-offerings but holocausts unto God: where
all is due make no reserve, and cut not a cummin-seed with the
Almighty: to serve Him singly to serve ourselves, were too par-
tial a piece of piety, not like to place us in the illustrious mansions
of glory*
II*
REST not in an ovation** but a triumph over thy passions. Let

* This sentence begins the closing reflections to the Letter to a
Friend, which were afterwards amplified into the Christian
Morals.

* The remainder of this section comprises the second and third
paragraphs of the closing reflections to the Letter to a Friend.

* Sect. II. The first and last two sentences compose par. iyth
of closing reflections to the Letter to a Friend. The succeeding
par. (18) is given here, having been omitted in the Christian
Morals : — "Give no quarter unto those vices which are of thine

* Ovation, a petty and minor kind of triumph,
cxliii

anger walk hanging down the head; let malice go manacled, and
envy fettered after thee. Behold within thee the long train of thy
trophies, not without thee. Make the quarrelling Lapithy tes sleep,
and Centaurs within lie quiet. Chain up the unruly legion of thy
breast. Lead thine own captivity captive, and be Caesar within
thyself.*

HE that is chaste and continent not to impair his strength, or
honest for fear of contagion, will hardly be heroically virtuous.
Adjourn not this virtue until that temper when Cato could lend
out his wife, and impotent satyrs write satires upon lust; but be
chaste in thy flaming days, when Alexander dared not trust his

inward family, and, having a root in thy temper, plead a right and
property in thee. Examine well thy complexional inclinations.
Raise early batteries against those strongholds built upon the rock
of nature, and make this a great part of the militia of thy life. The
politic nature of vice must be opposed by policy, and therefore
wiser honesties project and plot against sin ; wherein notwith~
standing we are not to rest in generals, or the trite stratagems of
art : that may succeed with one temper which may prove sue--
cessless with another. There is no community or commonwealth
of virtue ; every man must study his own economy, and erect these
rules unto the figure of himself."

* Cf. MS. Sloan. 1 848 : — " To restrain the rise of extravagances,
and timely to ostracise the most overgrowing enormities makes
a calm and quiet state in the dominion of ourselves, for vices have
their ambitions, and will be above one another, but though many
may possess us, yet is there commonly one that hath the dominion
over us ; one that lordeth over all, and the rest remain slaves unto
the humour of it. Such towering vices are not to be temporally
exostracised, but perpetually exiled, or rather to be served like
the rank poppies in Tarquin's garden, and made shorter by the
head; for the sharpest arrows are to be let fly against all such
imperious vices, which, neither enduring priority or equality,
Caesarean or Pompeian primity , must be absolute over all ; for
these opprobriously denominate us here, and chiefly condemn
us hereafter, and will stand in capital letters over our heads as the
titles of our sufferings."

* Sect. 1 1 1. The 4th paragraph of closing reflections to the Letter
to a Friend.

cxliv

eyes upon the fair sisters of Darius, and when so many think there
is no other way but Origen's.*
IV*

SHOW thy art in honesty, and lose not thy virtue by the bad
managery of it. Be temperate and sober; not to preserve your
body in an ability for wanton ends ; not to avoid the infamy of
common transgressors that way, and thereby to hope to expiate
or palliate obscure and closer vices ; not to spare your purse, nor
simply to enjoy health ; but, in one word, that thereby you may
truly serve God, which every sickness will tell you you cannot
well do without health. The sick man's sacrifice is but a lame
oblation. Pious treasures, laid up in healthful days, plead for sick
non~performances;withoutwhichwemustneedslookbackwith
anxiety upon the lost opportunities of health ; and may have cause
rather to envy than pity the ends of penitent public sufferers, who
go with healthful prayers unto the last scene of their lives, and in the
integrity of their faculties return their spirit unto God that gave it.

BE charitable before wealth make thee covetous, and lose not
the glory of the mite. If riches increase, let thy mind hold pace
with them; and think it not enough to be liberal, but munificent.
Though a cup of cold water from some hand may not be without
its reward, yet stick not thou for wine and oil for the wounds of
the distressed ; and treat the poor, as our Saviour did the multi-
tude, to the reliques of some baskets.** Diffuse thy beneficence
early, and while thy treasures call thee master ; there may be an
Atropos of thy fortunes before that of thy life, and thy wealth cut
off before that hour, when all men shall be poor; for the justice
of death looks equally upon the dead, and Charon expects no
more from Alexander than from Irus.
VI

GIVE not only unto seven, but also unto eight, that is, unto more
than many.* Though to give unto every one that asketh may
seem severe advice,** yet give thou also before asking; that is,

Who is said to have castrated himself.

* Sect. IV. Except the first sentence, this section concludes the
first paragraph of the concluding reflections of Letter to a Friend.

* The preceding part of this section constitutes the 5th paragraph
of the closing reflections of Letter to a Friend.

* Ecclesiasticus.
** Luke.

cxlv t

•where want is silently clamorous, and men's necessities not their
tongues do loudly call for thy mercies. For though sometimes
necessitousnessbedumb, or misery speak not out, yet true charity
is sagacious, and will find out hints for beneficence. Acquaint
thyself with the physiognomy of want, and let the dead colours
and first lines of necessity suffice to tell thee there is an object for
thy bounty. Spare not where thou canst not easily be prodigal,
and fear not to be undone by mercy; for since he who hath pity
on the poor lendeth unto the Almighty rewarder, who observes
no Ides but every day for His payments, charity becomes pious
usury, Christian liberality the most thriving industry; and what
we adventure in a cockboat may return in a carrack unto us. He
who thus casts his bread upon the water shall surely find it again;
for though it falleth to the bottom, it sinks but like the axe of the
prophet, to rise again unto him.
VII*

I F avarice be thy vice, yet make it not thy punishment. Miserable
men commiserate not themselves, bowelless unto others, and
merciless unto their own bowels. Let the fruition of things bless
the possession of them, and think it more satisfaction to live richly
than die rich. For since thy good works, not thy goods, -will follow
thee ; since \vealth is an appurtenance of life, and no dead man
is rich; to famish in plenty, and live poorly to die rich, were a
multiplying improvement in madness, and use upon use in
folly.
VIII *

TRUST not to the omnipotency of gold, and say not unto it,
thou art my confidence. Kiss not thy hand to that terrestrial sun,
nor bow thy ear unto its servitude. A slave unto mammon makes
no servant unto God. Covetousness cracks the sinews of faith ;
numbs the apprehension of anything above sense ; and, only af-
fected with the certainty of things present, makes a peradventure
of things to come ; lives but unto one world, nor hopes but fears
another ; makes their own death sweet unto others, bitter unto
themselves; brings formal sadness, scenical mourning, and no
wet eyes at the grave.

* Sect. VII. Paragraph yth of closing reflections of Letter to a
Friend*

* Sect. VIII. Paragraph 6th of closing reflections to the Letter
to a Friend.

cxlvi

IX*

PERSONS lightly dipt, not grained in generous honesty, are
but pale in goodness, and faint hued in integrity. But be thou
what thou virtuously art, and let not the ocean wash away thy
tincture. Stand magnetically upon that axis, when prudent sim--
plicityhathfixt there; and let no attraction invert the poles of thy
honesty. That vice may be uneasy and even monstrous unto
thee, let iterated good acts and long-confirmed habits make virtue
almost natural, or a second nature in thee. Since virtuous super-
structions have commonly generous foundations, dive into thy
inclinations, and early discover what nature bids thee to be or
tells thee thou mayest be. They who thus timely descend into
themselves, and cultivate the good seeds which nature hath set
in them, prove not shrubs but cedars in their generation. And to
be in the form of the best of the bad* or the worst of the good,
will be no satisfaction unto them.
X*

MAKE not the consequence of virtue the ends thereof. Be not
beneficent for a name or cymbal of applause ; nor exact and just
in commerce for the advantages of trust and credit, which attend
the reputation of true and punctual dealing: for these rewards,
though unsought for, plain virtue will bring with her. To have
other by-ends in good actions sours laudable performances,
which must have deeper roots, motives, and instigations, to give
them the stamp of virtues. *

* Sect. IX. Paragraph 8th of closing reflections to the Letter to
a Friend.

* Optimi malorum pessimi bonorum.

* Sect. X. Paragraph loth of closing reflections to the Letter to
a Friend.

* The following (i ith par. of closing reflections to the Letter,
€TC.) seems to have been omitted in the Christian Morals: —
"Though human infirmity may betray thy heedless days into the
popular ways of extravagancy, yet let not thine own depravity,
or the torrent of vicious times , carry thee into desperate enormities
in opinions, manners, or actions : if thou hast dipped thy foot in
the river, yet venture not over Rubicon; run not into extremities
from whence there is no regression, nor be ever so closely shut
up within the holds of vice and iniquity, as not to find some
escape by a postern of recipiscency."

cxlvii

XI*

LET not the law of thy country be the non ultra of thy honesty;
nor think that always good enough which the law will make
good. Narrow not the law of charity, equity, mercy. Join gospel
righteousness with legal right. Be not a mere Gamaliel in the
faith, but let the sermon in the mount be thy targum unto the law
of Sinai.^
XII

LIVE by old ethicks and the classical rules of honesty. Put no
new names or notions upon authentic virtues and vices.*4 Think
not that morality is ambulatory; that vices in one age are not vices
in another; or that virtues, which are the everlasting seal of right
reason, may be stamped by opinion. And therefore, though
vicious times invert the opinions of things, and set up new ethicks
against virtue, yet hold thou unto old morality; and rather than
follow a multitude to do evil, stand like Pompey's pillar con-
spicuous by thyself, and single in integrity. And since the worst
of times afford imitable examples of virtue; since no deluge of
vice is like to be so general but more than eight will escape ; *
eye well those heroes who have held their heads above water,
who have touched pitch and not been defiled, and in the common
contagion have remained uncorrupted.
XIII**

LET age, not envy, draw wrinkles on thy cheeks; be content
to be envied, but envy not. Emulation may be plausible and in-
dignation allowable, but admit no treaty with that passion which
no circumstance can make good. A displacency at the good of
others because they enjoy it, though not unworthy of it, is an
absurd depravity, sticking fast unto corrupted nature, and often
too hard for humility and charity, the great suppressors of envy.

* Sect. XL Paragraph 9th of closing reflections to the Letter to
a Friend.

* Targum, G*c. A paraphrase or amplification.

14 MS. Sloan. 1847, adds: — "Think not modesty will never gild
its like; fortitude will not be degraded into audacity and fool-
hardiness ; liberality will not be put off with the name of prodi-
gality, nor frugality exchange its name with avarice and solid
parsimony, and so our vices be exalted into virtues."

* Eight will escape. Alluding to the flood of Noah.

** Sect. XIII. Paragraph 1 3th of closing reflections to the Letter

to a Friend.

cxlviii

This surely is a lion not to be strangled but by Hercules himself,
or the highest stress of our minds, and an atom of that power which
subdueth all things unto itself.
XIV*

OWE not thy humility unto humiliation from adversity, but look
humbly down in that state when others look up wards upon thee.
Think not thy own shadow longer than that of others, nor de*-
light to take the altitude of thyself. Be patient in the age of pride,
when men live by short intervals of reason under the dominion
of humour and passion, when it is in the power of every one to
transform thee out of thyself, and run thee into the short madness.
If you cannot imitate Job, yet come not short of Socrates, and
those patient pagans who tired the tongues of their enemies,
while they perceived they spit their malice at brazen walls and
statues.

XV *

LET not the sun in Capricorn* go down upon thy wrath, but
write thy wrongs in ashes. Draw the curtain of night upon in~
juries, shut them up in the tower of oblivion,* and let them be as
though they had not been. To forgive our enemies, yet hope
that God will punish them, is not to forgive enough. To forgive
them ourselves, and not to pray God to forgive them, is a partial
piece of charity. Forgive thine enemies totally, and without any
reserve that however God will revenge thee.

XVI **

WHILE thou so hotly disclaimest the devil, be not guilty of
diabolism. Fall not into one name with that unclean spirit, nor
act his nature whom thou so much abhorrest: that is, to accuse,
calumniate, backbite, whisper, detract, or sinistrously interpret
others. Degenerous depravities, and narrow-minded vices ! not

\

* Sect. XIV. Paragraph i2th of closing reflections to the Letter
to a Friend.

* Sect. XV. Paragraph 1 5th of closing reflections to the Letter
to a Friend.

* Even when the days are shortest.

* Alluding unto the tower of oblivion mentioned by Procopios,
which was the name of a tower of imprisonment among the
Persians : whoever was put therein was as it were buried alive,
and it was death for any but to name him.

* * Sect. XVI . Paragraph 1 4th of closing reflections to the Letter
to a Friend.

cxlix

only below St. Paul's noble Christian but Aristotle's true gentle-
man.* Trust not with some that the epistle of St. James is apo-
cryphal, and so read with less fear that stabbing truth, that in
company with this vice "thy religion is in vain." Moses broke
the tables without breaking of the law ; but where charity is broke,
the law itself is shattered, which cannot be whole witnout love,
which is " the fulfilling of it." Look humbly upon thy virtues;
and though thou art rich in some, yet think thyself poor and
naked without that crowning grace, which "thinketh no evil,
which envieth not, which beareth, hopeth, believeth, endureth
all things." With these sure graces, while busy tongues are cry-
ing out for a drop of cold water, mutes may be in happiness, and
sina the trisagion in heaven.

XVII

HOWEVER thy understanding may waver in the theories of
true and false, yet fasten the rudder of thy will, steer straight unto
good and fall not foul on evil. Imagination is apt to rove, and
conjecture to keep no bounds. Some have run out so far, as to
fancy the stars might be but the light of the crystalline heaven
shot through perforations on the bodies of the orbs. Others more
ingeniously doubt whether there hath not been a vast tract of land
in the Atlantic ocean, which earthquakes and violent causes have
long ago devoured.* Speculative misapprehensions may be in-
nocuous, but immorality pernicious; theoretical mistakes and
physical deviations may condemn our judgments, not lead us into
judgment. But perversity of will, immoral and sinful enormities
walk with Adraste and Nemesis at their backs, pursue us unto
judgment, and leave us viciously miserable.
XVIII

BID early defiance unto those vices which are of thine inward
family, and having a root in thy temper plead a right and pro-
priety in thee. Raise timely batteries against those strongholds
built upon the rock of nature, and make this a great part of the
militia of thy life. Delude not thyself into iniquities from parti-
cipation or community, which abate the sense but not the
obliquity of them. To conceive sins less or less of sins, because

* See Aristotle's Ethics, chapter of Magnanimity.

* MS. CIX. Rawl. adds: — "Whether there hath not been a
passage from the Mediterranean into the Red Sea, and whether
the ocean at first had a passage into the Mediterranean by the
straits of Hercules."

cl

others also transgress, "were morally to commit that natural fallacy
of man, to take comfort from society, and think adversities less
because others also suffer them. The politic nature of vice must
be opposed by policy; and, therefore, wiser honesties project
and plot against it : wherein, notwithstanding, we are not to rest
in generals, or the trite stratagems of art. That may succeed with
one, which may prove successless with another: there is nocom-
munity or commonweal of virtue: every man must study his own
economy, and adapt such rules unto me figure of himself.
XIX* '

BE substantially great in thyself, and more than thou appearest
unto others ; and let the world be deceived in thee, as they are in
the lights of heaven. Hang early plummets upon the heels of
pride, and let ambition have but an epicycle and narrow circuit
in thee. Measure not thyself by thy morning shadow, but by the
extent of thy grave: and reckon thyself above the earth, by the
line thou must be contented with under it. Spread not into bound-
less expansions either of designs or desires. Think not that man-
kind liveth but for a few; and that the rest are born but to serve
those ambitions, which make but flies of men and wildernesses
of whole nations. Swell not into vehement actions which im-
broil and confound the earth; but be one of those violent ones
which force the kingdom of heaven.* If thou must needs rule,
be Zeno's king, and enjoy that empire which every man gives
himself. He who is thus his own monarch contentedly sways
the sceptre of himself, not envying the glory of crowned heads
and elohims of the earth. Could the world unite in the practice
of that despised train of virtues, which the divine ethics of our
Saviour hath so inculcated upon us, the furious face of things
must disappear; Eden would be yet to be found, and the angels
might look down, not with pity, but joy upon us.

iAt^V

THOUGH the quickness of thine ear were able to reach the
noise of the moon, -which some think it maketh in its rapid revo-
lution ; though the number of thy ears should equal Argus his
eyes; yet stop them all with the wise man's wax, and be deaf
unto the suggestions of tale-bearers, calumniators, pickthank or
malevolent delators, who, while quiet men sleep, sowing the

* Sect. XIX. Paragraph 1 6th of closing reflections to the Letter
to a Friend.

* Matthew xi.
cli

tares of discord and division, distract the tranquillity of charity
and all friendly society. These are the tongues that set the world
on fire, cankers of reputation, and like that of Jonas his gourd,
wither a good name in a night. Evil spirits may sit still, while
these spirits walk about and perform the business of hell. To
speak more strictly, our corrupted hearts are the factories of the
devil, which may be at work without his presence: for when
that circumventing spirit hath drawn malice, envy, and all un-
righteousness unto well-rooted habits in his disciples, iniquity
then goes on upon its own legs; and if the gate of hell were shut
up for a time, vice would still be fertile and produce the fruits of
hell. Thus when God forsakes us, Satan also leaves us : for such
offenders he looks upon as sure and sealed up, and his tempta-
tions then needless unto them.
XXI

ANNIHILATE not the mercies of God by the oblivion of in-
gratitude; for oblivion is a kind of annihilation; and for things
to be as though they had not been, is like unto never being.
Make not thy head a grave, but a repository of God's mercies.
Though thou hadst the memory of Seneca or Simonides, and
conscience the punctual memorist within us, yet trust not to thy
remembrance in things which need phylacteries. Register not
only strange, but merciful occurrences. Let Ephemerides not
Olympiads give thee account of his mercies: let thy diaries stand
thick with dutiful mementos and asterisks of acknowledgment.
And to be complete and forget nothing, date not His mercy
from thy nativity; look beyond the world, and before the era of
Adam.
XXII

PAINT not the sepulchre of thyself, and strive not to beautify
thy corruption. Be not an advocate for thy vices, nor call for many
hour-glasses to justify thy imperfections. Think not that always
good which thou thinkest thou canst always make good, nor that
concealed which the sun doth not behold : that which the sun
doth not now see, will be visible when the sun is out, and the
stars are fallen from heaven. Meanwhile there is no darkness unto
conscience; which can see without light, and in the deepest ob-
scurity give a clear draught of things, which the cloud of dis-
simulation hath concealed from all eyes. There is a natural
standing court within us, examining, acquitting, and condemning
at the tribunal of ourselves; wherein iniquities have their natural
thetas and no nocent is absolved by the verdict of himself. And
clii

therefore, although our transgressions shall be tried at the last
bar, the process need not be long: for the judge of all knoweth
all, and every man will nakedly know himself; and when so few
are like to plead not guilty, the assize must soon have an end.
XXIII

COM PLY with some humours , bear with others, but serve none .
Civil complacency consists with decent honesty; flattery is a
juggler, and no kin unto sincerity. But while thou maintainest
the plain path, and scornest to flatter others, fall not into self-
adulation, and become not thine own parasite. Be deaf unto thy-
self , and be not betrayed at home. Self-credulity, pride, and levity
lead unto self-idolatry. There is no Damocles like unto self-
opinion, nor any Syren to our own fawning conceptions. To
magnify our minor things, or hug ourselves in our apparitions;
to afford a credulous ear unto the clawing suggestions of fancy;
to pass our days in painted mistakes of ourselves; and though we
behold our own blood, to think ourselves the sons of Jupiter ; *
are blandishments of self-love, worse than outward delusion.
By this imposture, wise men sometimes are mistaken in their
elevation, and look above themselves. And fools, which are
antipodes unto the wise, conceive themselves to be but their
periceci, and in the same parallel with them.
XXIV

BE not a Hercules furens abroad, and a poltroon within thyself.
To chase our enemies out of the field, and be led captive by our
vices; to beat down our foes, and fall down to our concupis-
cences; are solecisms in moral schools, and no laurel attends
them. To well manage our affections, and wild horses of Plato,
are the highest circenses : and the noblest digladiation is in the
theatre of ourselves; for therein our inward antagonists, not only
like common gladiators, with ordinary weapons and downright
blows made at us, but also, like retiary and laqueary combatants,
with nets, frauds, and entanglements fall upon us. Weapons for
such combats, are not to be forged at Lipara: Vulcan's art doth
nothing in this internal militia ; wherein not the armour of Achilles,
but the armature of St. Paul, gives the glorious day, and triumphs
not leading up into capitols, but up into the highest heavens.
And, therefore, while so many think it the only valour to com-
mand and master others, study thou the dominion of thyself, and
quiet thine own commotions. Let right reason be thy Lycurgus,

* As Alexander the Great did.

cliii u

and lift up thy hand unto the law of it : move by the intelligences
of the superior faculties, not by the rapt of passion, nor merely by
that of temper and constitution. They who are merely carried on
by the wheel of such inclinations, without the hand and guidance
of sovereign reason, are but the automatous part of mankind, rather
lived than living, or at least underliving themselves.
XXV

LET not fortune, which hath no name in scripture, have any in
thy divinity. Let providence, not chance, have the honour of thy
acknowledgments, and be thy CEdipus in contingencies. Mark
Well the paths and winding ways thereof; but be not too wise
in the construction, or sudden in the application. The hand of
providence writes often by abbreviatures, hieroglyphics or short
characters, which, like the laconism on the wall, are not to be
made out but by a hint or key from that spirit which indited
them. Leave future occurrences to their uncertainties, think that
which is present thy own ; and, since 'tis easier to foretell an eclipse
than a foul day at some distance, look for little regular below.
Attend with patience the uncertainty of things, and what lieth
yet unexerted in the chaos of futurity. The uncertainty and ignor~
ance of things to come, makes the world new unto us by unex~
pected emergencies; whereby we pass not our days in the trite
road of affairs affording no novity; for the novelizing spirit of
man lives of variety, and the new faces of things.
XXVI

THOUGH a contented mind enlargeth the dimension of little
things; and unto some it is wealth enough not to be poor; and
others are well content, if they be but rich enough to be honest,
and to give every man his due: yet fall not into that obsolete
affectation of bravery, to throw away thy money, and to reject
all honours or honourable stations in this courtly and splendid
world. Old generosity is superannuated, and such contempt of
the world out of date. No man is now like to refuse the favour
of great ones, or be content to say unto princes, "Stand out of
my sun." And if any there be of such antiquated resolutions, they
are not like to be tempted out of them by great ones ; and 'tis fair
if they escape the name of hypochondriacks from the genius of
latter times, unto whom contempt of the world is the most con*-
temptible opinion; and to be able, like Bias, to carryall they have
about them were to be the eighth wise man. However, the old
tetrick philosophers looked always with indignation upon such
a face of things; and observing the unnatural current of riches,
cliv

power, and honour in the world, and withal the imperfection
and demerit of persons often advanced unto them, were tempted
unto angry opinions, that affairs were ordered more by stars than
reason, and that things went on rather by lottery than election.
XXVII

IF thy vessel be but small in the ocean of this world, if meanness
of possessions be thy allotment upon earth, forget not those virtues
which the great disposer of all bids thee to entertain from thy
quality and condition; that is, submission, humility, content of
mind, and industry. Content may dwell in all stations. To be
low, but above contempt, may be high enough to be happy.
But many of low degree may be higher than computed, and some
cubits above the common commensuration; for in all states virtue
gives qualifications and allowances, which make out defects.
Rough diamonds are sometimes mistaken for pebbles ; and mean-
ness maybe rich in accomplishments, which riches in vain desire.
If our merits be above our stations, if our intrinsical value be
greater than what we go for, or our value than our valuation, and
if we stand higher in God's, than in the censor's book ; it may
make some equitable balance in the inequalities of this world,
and there maybe no such vast chasm or gulf between disparities
as common measures determine. The divine eye looks upon high
and low differently from that of man. They who seem to stand
upon Olympus, and high mounted unto our eyes, may be but in
the valleys, and low ground unto his; for he looks upon those as
highest who nearest approach his divinity, and upon those as
lowest who are farthest from it.
XXVIII

WHEN thou lookest upon the imperfections of others, allow
one eye for what is laudable in them, and the balance they have
from some excellency, which may render them considerable.
While we look with fear or hatred upon the teeth of the viper,
we may behold his eye with love. In venomous natures some-
thing may be amiable: poisons afford antipoisons: nothing is
totally, or altogether uselessly bad. Notable virtues are some-
times dashed with notorious vices, and in some vicious tempers
have been found illustrious acts of virtue; which makes such
observable worth in some actions of king Demetrius, Antonius,
and Ahab, as are not to be found in the same kind in Aristides,
Numa, or David. Constancy, generosity, clemency, and lib-
erality have been highly conspicuous in some persons not marked
out in other concerns for example or imitation. But since good-
civ

ness is exemplary in all, if others have not our virtues, let us not
be wanting in theirs ; nor scorning them for their vices whereof
we are free, be condemned by their virtues wherein we are de-
ficient. There is dross, alloy, and embasement in all human
tempers; and he flieth without wings, -who thinks to find Ophir
or pure metal in any. For perfection is not, like light, centred in
any one body; but, like the dispersed seminalities of vegetables
at the creation, scattered through the whole mass of the eartM, no
place producing all, and almost all some. So that 'tis well, if a
perfect man can be made out of many men, and, to the perfect
eye of God, even out of mankind. Time, which perfects some
things, imperfects also others. Could we intimately apprehend
the ideated man, and as he stood in the intellect of God upon the
first exertion by creation, we might more narrowly comprehend
our present degeneration, and how widely we are fallen from the
pure exemplar and idea of our nature: for after this corruptive
elongation from a primitive and pure creation, we are almost lost
in degeneration; andAdamhath not only fallen from his Creator,
but we ourselves from Adam, our tycho and primary generator.*

QUARREL not rashly with adversities not yet understood; and
overlook not the mercies often bound up in them: for we con-
sider not sufficiently the good of evils, nor fairly compute the
mercies of providence in things afflictive at first hand. The

* MS. Sloan. 1885, adds: — " But at this distance and elongation
we dearly know that depravity hath overspread us, corruption
entered like oil into our bones. Imperfections upbraid us on all
hands, and ignorance stands pointing at us in every corner in
nature. We are unknowing in things which fall under cognition,
yet drive at that which is above our comprehension. We have a
slender knowledge of ourselves, and much less of God, wherein
we are like to rest until the advantage of another being; and
therefore in vain we seek to satisfy our souls in close apprehen-
sions and piercing theories of the divinity even from the divine
word. Meanwhile we have a happy sufficiency in our own
natures, to apprehend His good will and pleasure; it being not of
our concern or capacity from thence to apprehend or reach His
nature, the divine revelation in such points being not framed unto
intellectuals of earth. Even the angels and spirits have enough to
admire in their sublimer created natures ; admiration being the act
of the creature and not of God, who doth not admire Himself."
clvi

\

famous Andreas Doria being invited toafeastbyAloysioFieschi,
with design to kill him, just the night before fell mercifully into
a fit of the goutf and so escaped that mischief. When Cato in"
tended to kill himself, from a blow which he gave his servant,
•who would not reach his sword unto him, his hand so swelled
that he had much ado to effect his design. Hereby any one but
a resolved Stoic might have taken a fair hint of consideration, and
that some merciful genius would have contrived his preservation.
To be sagacious in such intercurrences is not superstition, but
wary and pious discretion; and to contemn such hints were to
be deaf unto the speaking hand of God, wherein Socrates and
Cardan would hardly have been mistaken.
XXX

BREAK not open the gate of destruction, and make no haste or
bustle unto ruin. Post not heedlessly on unto the non ultra of
folly, or precipice of perdition. Let vicious ways have their tropics
and deflections, and swim in the waters of sin but as in the As-
phaltick lake, though smeared and defiled, not to sink to the
bottom. If thou hast dipped thy foot in the brink, yet venture not
over Rubicon. Run not into extremities from whence there is no
regression. In the vicious ways of the world it mercifully falleth
out that we become not extempore wicked, but it taketh some
time and pains to undo ourselves. We fall not from virtue, like
Vulcan from heaven, in a day. Bad dispositions require some
time to grow into bad habits; bad habits must undermine good,
andoften-repeatedactsmake us habitually evil : so that by gradual
depravations, and while we are but staggeringly evil, we are not
left without parenthesis of considerations, thoughtful rebukes,
and merciful interventions, to recall us unto ourselves. For the
wisdom of God hath methodized the course of things unto the
best advantage of goodness, and thinking considerators overlook
not the tract thereof.
XXXI

SINCE men and women have their proper virtues and vices;
and even twins of different sexes have not only distinct coverings
in the womb, but differing qualities and virtuous habits after;
transplace not their proprieties, and confound not their distinc-
tions. Let masculine and feminine accomplishments shine in
their proper orbs, and adorn their respective subjects. However,
unite not the vices of both sexes in one; be not monstrous in in-
iquity, nor hermaphroditically vicious.

clvii

XXXII

IF generous honesty, valour, and plain dealing be the cognisance
of thy family, or characteristic of thy country, hold fast such in-
clinations sucked in with thy first breath, and which lay in the
cradle with thee. Fall notinto transforming degenerations, which
under the old name create a new nation. Be not an alien in thine
own nation; bring not Orontes into Tiber: learn the virtues not
the vices of thy foreign neighbours, and make thy imitation by
discretion not contagion. Feel something of thyself in the noble
acts of thy ancestors, and find in thine own genius that of thy
predecessors. Rest not under the expired merits of others, shine
by those of thy own. Flame not like the central fire which en-
lighteneth no eyes, which no man seeth, and most men think
there's no such thing to be seen. Add one ray unto the common
lustre; add not only to the number but the note of thy generation;
and prove not a cloud but an asterisk in thy region.
XXXIII

SINCE thou hast an alarum in thy breast, which tells thee thou
hast a living spirit in thee above two thousand times in an hour;
dull not away thy days in slothful supinity and the tediousness
of doing nothing. To strenuous minds there is an inquietude in
over quietness, and no laboriousness in labour; and to tread a
mile after the slow pace of a snail, or the heavy measures of the
lazy of Brazilia, were a most tiring penance, and worse than a
race of some furlongs at the Olympics. The rapid courses of the
heavenly bodies are rather imitable by our thoughts, than our
corporeal motions; yet the solemn motions of our lives amount
unto a greater measure than is commonly apprehended. Some
few men have surrounded the globe of the earth; yet many in the
set locomotions and movements of their days have measured the
circuit of it, and twenty thousand miles have been exceeded by
them. Move circumspectly not meticulously, and rather carefully
solicitous than anxiously solicitudinous. Think not there is a lion
in the way, nor walk with leaden sandals in the paths of good-
ness; but in all virtuous motions let prudence determine thy mea-
sures. Strive not to run, like Hercules, a furlong in a breath : fes-
tination may prove precipitation; deliberating delay may be wise
cunctation, and slowness no slothfulness.
XXXIV

SINCE virtuous actions have their own trumpets, and, without
any noise from thyself, will have their resound abroad; busy not
thy best member in the encomium of thyself. Praise is a debt we
clviii

owe unto the virtues of others, and due unto our own from all,
whom malice hath not made mutes, or envy struck dumb. Fall
not, however, into the common prevaricating way of self-com-
mendation and boasting, by denoting the imperfections of others.
He who discommendeth others obliquely, commendeth himself.
He who whispers their infirmities, proclaims his own exemptions
from them; and, consequently, says, I am not as this publican, or
hicniger,* whom I talk of. Open ostentation and loud vain- glory
is more tolerable than this obliquity, as but containing some froth,
no ink; as but consisting of a personal piece of folly, nor com-
plicated with uncharitableness.^ Superfluously we seek a pre-
carious applause abroad; every good man hath his plaudit within
himself; and though his tongue be silent, is not without loud
cymbals in his breast. Conscience will become his panegyrist,
and never forget to crown and extol him unto himself.
XXXV

BLESS not thyself only that thou wert born in Athens;* but,
among thy multiplied acknowledgments, lift up one hand unto
heaven, that thou wert born of honest parents; that modesty, hu-
mility, patience, and veracity, lay in the same egg, and came into

* Hie niger est, hunc tu Romane caveto. — Hor.

* MS. Sloan. 1847, adds : — " They who thus closely and whis-
peringly calumniate the absent living, will be apt to strain their
voice and be apt to be loud enough in infamy of the dead; wherein
there should be a civil amnesty and an oblivion concerning those
who are in a state where all things are forgotten ; but Solon will
make us ashamed to speak evil of the dead, a crime not actionable
in Christian governments, yet hath been prohibited by Pagan
laws and the old sanctions of Athens. Many persons are like
many rivers, whose mouths are at a vast distance from their heads,
for their words are as far from their thoughts as Canopus from the
head of Nilus. These are of the former of those men, whose
punishment in Dante's hell is to look everlastingly backward : if
you have a mind to laugh at a man, or disparage the judgment of
anyone, set him a talking of things to come or events of hereafter
contingency: which elude the cognition of such an arrogate, the
knowledge of them whereto the ignorant pretend not, and the
learned imprudently fail; wherein men seem to talk but as babes
would do in the womb of their mother, of the things of the world
which they are entering into."

* As Socrates did. Athens a place of learning and civility,
clix

theworld with thee. From such foundations thou mayst be happy
inavirtuous precocity, and make an early and long walk in good"
ness ; so mayst thou more naturally feel the contrariety of vice
unto nature, and resist some by the antidote of thy temper. As
charity covers, so modesty preventeth a multitude of sins; with-
holdingfromnoon-dayvicesandbrazen-browediniquities,from
sinning on the house-top, and painting our follies with the rays
of the sun. Where this virtue reigneth, though vice may show its
head, it cannot be in its glory. Where shame of sin sets, look not
for virtue to arise; for when modesty taketh wing, Astrea* goes
soon after.
XXXVI

THE heroical vein of mankind runs much in the soldiery, and
courageous part of the world; and in that form we oftenest find
men above men. History is full of the gallantry of that tribe; and
when we read their notable acts, we easily find what a difference
there is between a life in Plutarch and in Laertius. Where true
fortitude dwells, loyalty, bounty, friendship, and fidelity may be
found. A man may confide in persons constituted for noble ends,
who dare do and suffer, and who have a hand to burn for their
country and their friend. Small and creeping things are the pro-
duct of petty souls. He is like to be mistaken, who makes choice
of a covetous man for a friend, or relieth upon the reed of narrow
and poltroon friendship. Pitiful things are only to be found in
the cottages of such breasts ; but bright thoughts, clear deeds,
constancy, fidelity, bounty, and generous honesty are the gems
of noble minds; wherein, to derogate from none, the true heroic
English gentleman hath no peer.

PART THE SECOND
I

PUNISH not thyself with pleasure; glut not thy sense with
palative delights; nor revenge the contempt of temperance by
the penalty of satiety. Were there an age of delight or any plea-
sure durable, who would not honour Volupiar' but the race of
delight is short, and pleasures have mutable faces. The pleasures
of one age are not pleasures in another, and their lives fall short
of our own. Even in our sensual days, the strength of delight is
in its seldomness or rarity, and sting in its satiety : mediocrity is
its life, and immoderacy its confusion. The luxurious emperors

* Astrea, goddess of justice and consequently of all virtue,
clx

of old inconsiderately satiated themselves with the dainties of sea
and land, till wearied through all varieties, their refections became
a study unto them, and they were fain to feed by invention: no-
vices in true epicurism! which, by mediocrity, paucity, quick and
healthful appetite, makes delights smartly acceptable ; whereby
Epicurus himself found Jupiter's brain in a piece of Cytheridian
cheese,* and the tongues of nightingales in a dish of onions.
Hereby healthful and temperate poverty hath the start of nause-
ating luxury; unto whose clear and naked appetite every meal is
a feast, and in one single dish the first course of Metellus ; * who
are cheaply hungry, and never lose their hunger, or advantage of
acravingappetite,becauseobviousfoodcontentsit;whileNero,*
half famished, could not feed upon a piece of bread, and, linger-
ing after his snowed water, hardly got down an ordinary cup of
Calda.x By such circumscriptions of pleasure the contemned
philosophers reserved unto themselves the secret of delight,
which the Helluos of those days lost in their exorbitances. In vain
we study delight ; it is at the command of every sober mind, and
in every sense born with us: but nature, who teacheth us the rule
of pleasure, instructeth also in the bounds thereof, and where its
lineexpireth. And, therefore, temperate minds, not pressing their
pleasures until the sting appeareth, enjoy their contentations con-
tentedly, and without regret, and so escape the folly of excess, to
be pleased unto displacency.
II

BRING candid eyes unto the perusal of men's works, and let
not Zoilism or detraction blast well- intended labours. He that
endureth no faults in men's writings must only read his own,
wherein, for the most part, all appeareth white. Quotation mis-
takes, inadvertency, expedition, and human lapses, may make not
only moles but warts in learned authors; who, notwithstanding,
being judged by the capital matter, admit not of disparagement. I
should unwillingly affirm that Cicero was but slightly versed in
Homer, because in his work, De Gloria, he ascribed those verses
unto Ajax, which were delivered by Hector* What if Plautus, in
theaccount of Hercules, mistaketh nativity for conception t Who

* Cerebrum Jovis, for a delicious bit.

* His riotous pontifical supper, the great variety whereat is to be
seen in Macrobius.

* Nero, in his flight.

x Caldae gelidaeque minister,
clxi x

would have mean thoughts of Apollinaris Sidomus,who seems
to mistake the river Tigris for Euphrates.'' and, though a good
historian and learned bishop of Avergne had the misfortune to
be out in the story of David, making mention of him when the
ark was sent back by the Philistines upon a cart; which was before
his time. Though I have no great opinion of Machiavel's learning,
yet I shall not presently say that he was but a novice in Roman
history, because he was mistaken in placing Commodus after the
Emperor Severus. Capital truths are to be narrowly eyed; col-
lateral lapses and circumstantial deliveries not to be too strictly
sifted. And if the substantial subject be well forged out, we need
not examine the sparks which irregularly fly from it.
Ill

LET well -weighed considerations, not stiff and peremptory
assumptions, guide thy discourses, pen, and actions. To begin or
continue our works like Trismegistus of old, "verumcerteverum
atque verissimum est," * wouldsound arrogantly unto presentears
in this strict enquiringage; 'wherein, for the most part, ' probably'
and ' perhaps ' will hardly serve to mollify the spirit of captious
contradictors. If Cardan saith that a parrot is a beautiful bird,
Scaliger will set his wits to work to prove it a deformed animal.
The compage of all physical truths is not so closely jointed, but
opposition may find intrusion; nor always so closely maintained,
as not to suffer attrition. Many positions seem quodlibetically
constituted, and, like a Delphian blade, will cut on both sides.
Some truths seem almost falsehoods, and some falsehoods almost
truths; wherein falsehood and truth seem almost aequilibriously
stated, and but a f ew grains of distinction to bear down the balance.
Some have digged deep, yet glanced by the royal vein; andaman
maycome unto thepericardium,butnottheheart of truth. Besides,
many things are known, as some are seen, that is by parallaxis, or
at some distance from their true and proper beings, the superficial
regard of things having a different aspect from their true and central
natures. And this moves soberpens unto suspensory and timorous
assertions, nor presently to obtrude them as Sybil's leaves, which
after considerations may find to be but folious appearances, and
not the central and vital interiors of truth.
IV

VALUE the judicious, and let not mere acquests in minor parts
of learning gain thy pre-existimation. 'Tis an unjust way of com-

* In Tabula Smaragdina.
clxii

pute,tomagnifyaweakheadfor some Latin abilities; and to under-
value a solid judgment, because he knows not the genealogy of
Hector. When that notable king of France* would have his son
to know but one sentence in Latin; had it been a good one, per-
haps it had been enough. Natural parts and good judgments rule
the -world. States are not governed by ergotisms. Many have
ruled well, who could not, perhaps, define a commonwealth; and
they who understand not the globe of the earth, command a great
part of it. Where natural logic prevails not, artificial too often
faileth. Where nature fills the sails, the vessel goes smoothly on;
and when judgment is the pilot, the insurance need not be high.
When industry builds upon nature, we may expect pyramids :
where that foundation is wanting, the structure must be low.
They do most by books, who could do much without them; and
he that chiefly owes himself unto himself, is the substantial man.
V

LET thy studies be free as thy thoughts and contemplations: but
flynot onlyupon the wingsof imagination; join sense unto reason,
and experiment unto speculation, and sogive life unto embryon
truths, and verities yet in their chaos. There is nothing more
acceptable unto the ingenious world, than this noble eluctation
of truth; wherein, against the tenacity of prejudice and prescrip-
tion, this century nowprevaileth. What libraries of new volumes
after times will behold, and in what a new world of knowledge
the eyes of our posterity may be happy, a few ages may joyfully
declare; and is but a cold thought unto those who cannot hope
to behold this exantlation of truth, or that obscured virgin half out
of the pit: which might make some content with a commutation
of the time of their lives, and to commend the fancy of the Pytha-
gorean metempsychosis; whereby they might hope to enjoy this
happiness in their third orfourth selves,and behold thatin Pytha-
goras, which they now but foresee in Euphorbus.^ The world,
which took but six days to make, is like to take six thousand to
make out: meanwhile, old truths voted down begin to resume
their places, and new ones arise upon us; wherein there is no
comfort in the happiness of Tully's Elysium,* or any satisfaction

* Louis the Eleventh. Qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnare.

* Ipse ego, nam memini, Trojani tempore belli,
Panthoides Euphorbus eram. — Ovid.

* Who comforted himself that he should there converse with the
old philosophers.

clxiii

(torn the ghosts of the ancients, who knew so little of what is now
well known. Men disparage not antiquity, who prudently exalt
new enquiries; and make not them the judges of truth, who were
but fellow enquirers of it. Who can but magnify the endeavours
of Aristotle, and the noble start which learning had under him ;
or less than pity the slender progression made upon such advan-
tages.^ while many centuries were lost in repetitions and trans-
scriptions, sealing up the book of knowledge. And, therefore,
rather than to swell the leaves of learning by fruitless repetitions,
to sing the same song in all ages, nor adventure at essays beyond
the attempt of others, many would be content that some would
write like Helmont or Paracelsus; and be willing to endure the
monstrosity of some opinions, for divers singular notions requit-
ing such aberrations.
VI

DESPISE not the obliquities of younger ways, nor despair of
better things whereof there is yet no prospect. Who would
imagine that Diogenes, who in his younger days was a falsifier
of money, should in the after-course of his life be so great a con-
temner of metal / Some negroes who believe the resurrection,
think that they shall rise white.* Even in this life, regeneration
may imitate resurrection; our black and vicious tinctures may
wear off, and goodness clothe us -with candour. Good admon-
itions knock not always in vain. There will be signal examples
of God's mercy, and the angels must not want their charitable
rejoices for the conversion of lost sinners. Figures of most angles
do nearest approach unto circles which have no angles at all.
Some may be near unto goodness, who are conceived far from
it; and many things happen, not likely to ensue from any promises
of antecedences. Culpable beginnings have found commendable
conclusions,andinfamouscoursespiousretractations. Detestable
sinners have proved exemplary converts on earth, and may be
glorious in the apartment or Mary Magdalen in heaven. Men are
not the same through all divisions of their ages: time, experience,
self-reflections,and God's mercies, make in some well- tempered
minds a kind of translation before death, and men to differ from
themselves as well as from other persons. Hereof the old world
afforded many examples, to the infamy of latter ages, wherein
men too often live by the rule of their inclinations; so that, with -

* Mandelslo's travels,
clxiv

out any astral prediction, the first day gives the last : * men are
commonly as they were : or rather, as bad dispositions run into
worser habits, the evening doth not crown, but sourly conclude
the day.
VII

IF the Almighty will not spare us according to his merciful
capitulation at Sodom; if his goodness please not to pass over a
great deal of bad for a small pittance of good, or to look upon us
in a lump ; there is slender hope for mercy, or sound presumption
of fulfilling half his will, either in persons or nations : they who
excel in some virtues being so often defective in others; few men
driving at the extent and amplitude of goodness, but computing
themselves by their best parts, and others by their worst, are con-
tenttorest in those virtues which others commonly want. Which
makes this speckled face of honesty in the world ; and which was
the imperfection* of the old philosophers and great pretenders
unto virtue, who "well declining the gaping vices of intemper-
ance, incontinency, violence, and oppression, were yet blindly
peccant in iniquities of closer faces, were envious, malicious, con-
temners, scoffers, censurers, and stuffed with vizard vices, no less
depraving the ethereal particle and diviner portion of man. For
envy, malice, hatred, are the qualities of Satan, close and dark
like himself; and where such brands smoke, the soul cannot be
white. Vice may be had at all prices ; expensive and costly in-
iquities, which make the noise, cannot be every man's sins : but
the soul may be foully inquinated at a very low rate; and a man
may be cheaply vicious, to the perdition of himself.

* Primusque dies dedit extremum.

* MS. Sloan. 1874 substitutes here: — "Persons, sects, and na-
tions, mainly settling upon some Christian particulars, which they
conceive most acceptable unto God, and promoting the interest
of their inclinations, parties, and divisions ; every one reckoning
and preferring himself by the particulars wherein he excelleth,
and decrying all others, though highly eminent in other Christian

^5 ^3 ^5 * * * * *

virtues. Which makes this speckled face of honesty in the world;
whereas, if men would not seek themselves abroad; if every one
would judge and reckon himself by his worst, and others by their
best parts, this deception must needs vanish ; humility would gain
ground; charity would overspread the face of the church, and the
fruits of the spirit not be so thinly found among us.
"This was the imperfection," €>c.
clxv

VIII

OPINION rides upon the neck of reason; and men are happy,
wise, or learned, according as that empress shall set them down
in the register of reputation. However, weigh not thyself in the
scales of thy own opinion, but let the judgment of the judicious
be the standard of thy merit. Self-estimation is a flatterer too
readily entitling us unto knowledge and abilities, which others
solicitously labour after, and doubtfully think they attain. Surely
such confident tempers do pass their days in best tranquillity,
who resting in the opinion of their own abilities, are happily
gulled by such contentation; wherein pride, self-conceit, con-
fidence, and opiniatrity, will hardly suffer any to complain of
imperfection. To think themselves in the right, or all that right,
or only that, which they do or think, is a fallacy of high content;
though others laugh in their sleeves, and look upon them as in a
deluded state of judgment: wherein, notwithstanding, 'twere
but a civil piece of complacency to suffer them to sleep who
would not wake, to let them rest in their securities, nor by dissent
or opposition to stagger their contentments.

SINCE the brow speaks often truth, since eyes and noses have
tongues, and the countenance proclaims the heart and inclina-
tions; let observation so far instruct thee in physiognomical lines,
as to be some rule for thy distinction, and guide for thy affection
unto such as look most like men. Mankind, methinks, is compre-
hended in a few faces, if we exclude all visages which in any way
participate of symmetries and schemes of look common unto
other animals. For as though man were the extract of the world,
in whom all were " in coagulate," which in their forms were "in
soluto" and at extension; we often observe that men do most act
those creatures, whose constitution, parts, and complexion, do
most predominate in their mixtures. This is a corner stone in
physiognomy, and holds some truth not only in particular persons
but also in whole nations. There are, therefore, provincial faces,
national lips and noses, which testify not only the natures of those
countries, but of those which have them elsewhere. Thus we
may make England the whole earth, dividing it not only into
Europe, Asia, Africa, but the particular regions thereof; and may
in some latitude affirm, that there are Egyptians, Scythians, In-
dians among us, who, though born in England, yet carry the faces
and air of those countries, and are also agreeable and correspon-
dent unto their natures. Faces look uniformly unto our eyes: how
clxvi

they appear unto some animals of a more piercing or differing
sight, who are able to discover the inequalities, rubs, and hairi-
ness of the skin, is not without good doubt: and, therefore, in
reference unto man, Cupid is said to be blind. Affection should
not be too sharp-eyed, and love is not to be made by magnifying
glasses. If things were seen as they truly are, the beauty of bodies
would be much abridged. And, therefore, the wise contriver hath
drawn the pictures and outsides of things softly and amiably unto
the natural edge of our eyes, not leaving them able to discover
those uncomely asperities, which make oyster-shells in good
faces, and hedgehogs even in Venusfs moles.
J\,

COURT not felicity too far, and weary not the favourable hand
of fortune. Glorious actions have their times, extent, and non
ultras. To put no end unto attempts were to make prescription
of successes, and to bespeak unhappiness at the last: for the line
of our lives is drawn with white and black vicissitudes, wherein
the extremes hold seldom one complexion. That Pompey should
obtain the surname of Great at twenty-five years, that men in
their young and active days should be fortunate and perform no-
table things is no observation of deep wonder ; they having the
strength of their fates before them, nor yet acted their parts in the
world for which they were brought into it; whereas men of years,
matured for counsels and designs, seem to be beyond the vigour
of their active fortunes, and high exploits of life, providentially
ordained unto ages best agreeable unto them. And, therefore,
many brave men finding their fortune grow faint, and feeling its
declination, have timely withdrawn themselves from great at-
tempts, and so escaped the ends of mighty men, disproportion-
able to their beginnings.* But magnanimous thoughts have so
dimmed the eyes of many, that forgetting the very essence of
fortune, and the vicissitude of good and evil, they apprehend no
bottom in felicity; and so have been still temp ted on unto mighty
actions, reserved for their destructions. For fortune lays the plot

* MS. Sloan. 1874 adds thus: "Wisely stopping about the
meridian of their felicities, and unwilling to hazard the favours of
the descending wheel, or to fight downward in the setting arch
of fortune. ' Sic lonoius aevum destruit ingentes animos, et vita
superstes fortunae ; nisi summa dies cum fine bonorum affluit et
celeri praevertit tristia leto, dedecori est fortuna prior; quisquam-
ne secundis tradere se fatis audet nisi morte parata t* — Lucan 7."
clxvii

of our adversities in the foundation of our felicities, blessing us
in the first quadrate, to blast us more sharply in the last. And
since in the highest felicities there lieth a capacity of the lowest
miseries, she hath this advantage from our happiness to make us
truly miserable : for to become acutely miserable we are to be
first happy. Affliction smarts most in the most happy state, as
having somewhat in it of Belisarius at beggar's bush, or Bajazet
in the grate. And this the fallen angels severely understand; who
have acted their first part in heaven, are made sharply miserable
by transition, and more afflictivelyfeel the contrary state of hell.*

CARRY no careless eye upon the unexpected scenes of things;
but ponder the acts of Providence in the public ends of great and
notable men, set out unto the view of all for no common memo'-
randums.* The tragical exits and unexpected periods of some

* MS. Sloan. 1874 substitutes here: — "And this is the observable
course ; not only in this visible stage of things, but may be feared
in our second beings and everlasting selves ; wherein the good
things past are seconded by the bad to come: and many to whom
the embraces of fortune are open here, may find Abraham's arms
shut unto him hereafter; which wakes serious consideration, not
so much to pity as envy some men's infelicities, wherein, con--
sidering the circle of both our beings, and the succession of good
unto evil, tyranny may sometimes prove courteous, and malice
mercifully cruel. Wherein, notwithstanding, if swelling begin~
nings have found uncomfortable conclusions, it is by the method
and justice of providence equalizing one with the other, and re*-
ducing the sum of the whole unto a mediocrity by the balance of
extremities : that in the sum the felicities of great ones hold truth
and parity with most that are below them : whereby the minor
favourites of fortune which incur not such sharp transitions, have
no cause to whine, nor men of middle fates to murmur at their
indifferences.

" By this method of providence the devil himself is deluded; who
maligning us at all points, and bearing felicity from us even in
this earthly being, he becomes assistant unto our future happiness,
and blessed vicissitude of the next. And this is also the unhappi'-
ness of himself, who having acted his first part in heaven, is made
sharply miserable by transition, and more afflictively feels the
contrary state of hell."

* MS. Sloan. 1 874 continues : — " Whereof I, that have not seen
clxviii

eminent persons, cannot but amaze considerate observators;
wherein, notwithstanding, most men seem to see by extramission,
without reception or self-reflection, and conceive themselves un-
concerned by the fallacy of their own exemption : whereas, the
mercy of God hath singled out but few to be the signals of His
justice, leaving the generality of mankind to the pedagogy of
example. But the inadvertency of our natures not well appre-
hending this favourable method and merciful decimation , and that
He showeth in some what others also deserve; they entertain no
sense of His hand beyond the stroke of themselves. Whereupon
the whole becomes necessarily punished, and the contracted hand
of God extended unto universal judgments : from whence, never-
theless, the stupidity of our tempers receives but faint impressions,
and in the most tragical state of times holds but starts of good
motions. So that to continue us in goodness there must be iterated
returns of misery, and a circulation in afflictions is necessary.* And

the sixtieth part of time, have beheld great examples. Than the
incomparable Montrose, no man acted a more fortunate part in
the first scene of his adventures; but courageous loyalty con-
tinuing his attempts, he quickly felt that fortune's favours were
out; and fell upon miseries smartly answering his felicities,
which was the only accomplishment wanting before to make
him fit for Plutarch's pen, and to parallel the lives of his heroic
captains."

* MS. Sloan. 1 874 adds : "Which is the amazing part of that in-
comprehensible patience, to condescend to act over these vicis-
situdes even in the despair of our betterments : and how that
omnipotent spirit that would not be exasperated by our fore-
fathers above 1600 years, should thus lastingly endure our suc-
cessive transgressions, and still contend with flesh; or how he
can forgive those sins which will be committed again, and accept
of repentances, which must have after-penitences, is the riddle
of his mercies.

" If God had not determined a settled period unto the world, and
ordered the duration thereof unto His merciful intentions, it seems
a kind of impossibility that he should have thus long continued
it. Some think there will be another world after this. Surely God,
who hath beheld the iniquity of this, will hardly make another
of the same nature ; and some wonder why He ever made any at
all since He was so happy in Himself without it, and self-suffi-
ciently free from all provocation, wrath, and indignation, arising
clxix y

sincewe cannot bewise by warnings; since plagues are insignifi-
cant, except we be personally plagued; since also we cannot be
punished unto amendment by proxy or commutation, nor by
vicinity, but contraction; there is an unhappy necessity that we
must smart in our own skins,and the provoked arm of the Almighty
must fall upon ourselves . The capital sufferings of others are rather
our monitions than acquitments. There is but one who died salvi-
ficallyfor us, and able to say unto death, hitherto shaltthougo and
no farther; only one enlivening death, which makes gardens of
graves, and that which was sowed in corruption to arise and
Sourish in glory ; when death itself shall die, and living shall have
no period; when the damned shall mourn at the funeral of death;
when life not death shall be the wages of sin : when the second
death shall prove a miserable life , and destruction shall be courted .
XII

ALTHOUGH their thoughts may seem too severe, who think
that few ill-natured men go to heaven ; yet it may be acknow-
ledged that good-natured persons are best founded for that place;
who enter the world with good dispositions and natural graces,
more ready to be advanced by impressions from above, and
Christianized unto pieties; who carry about them plain and down-
right dealing minds, humility, mercy, charity, and virtues accept-
able unto God and man. But whatever success they may have as
to heaven, they are the acceptable men on earth, and happy is he
who hath his quiver full of them for his friends. These are not
the dens wherein falsehood lurks, and hypocrisy hides its head ;
wherein frowardness makes its nest; or where malice, hard-
heartedness, and oppression love to dwell ; nor those by whom
the poor get little, and the rich sometime lose all; men not of re-
tracted looks, but who carry their hearts in their faces, and need
not to be looked upon with perspectives ; not sordidly or mis-
chievously ingrateful; who cannot learn to ride upon the neck of
the afflicted, nor load the heavy laden, but who keep the temple
of Janus shut by peaceable and quiet tempers ; who make not
only the best friends, but the best enemies, as easier to forgive
than offend, and ready to pass by the second offence before they
avenge the first; who make natural royalists, obedient subjects,
kind and merciful princes, verified in our own, one of the best-
natured kings of tnis throne. Of the old Roman emperors the

from this world, which sets his justice and his mercy at perpetual

contention."

clxx

best were thebest^natured; though they made buta small number,
and might be writ in a ring. Many of the rest were as bad men as
princes; humorists rather than of good humours; and of good
natural parts rather than of good natures, which did but arm their
bad inclinations, and make them wittily wicked.
XIII

WITH what shift and pains we come into the world, we re--
member not : but 'tis commonly found no easy matter to get out
of it. Many have studied to exasperate the ways of death, but
fewer hours have been spent to soften that necessity. That the
smoothest way unto the grave is made by bleeding, as common
opinion presumeth, beside the sick and fainting languors, which
accompany that effusion, the experiment in Lucan and Seneca
will make us doubt ; under which the noble stoic so deeply
laboured, that to conceal his affliction, he was fain to retire from
the sight of his wife, and not ashamed to implore the merciful
hand of his physician to shorten his misery therein. Ovid,* the
old heroes, and the stoics, who were so afraid of drowning, as
dreading thereby the extinction of their soul, which they con'-
ceived to be a fire, stood probably in fear of an easier way of death;
•wherein the water, entering the possessions of air, makes a tern--
perate suffocation, and kills as it were without a fever. Surely
many, who have had the spirit to destroy themselves, have not
been ingenious in the contrivance thereof. 'Twas a dull way
practised by Themistocles, to overwhelm himself with bull's
blood,* who, being an Athenian, might have held an easier theory
of death from the state potion of his country ; from which Socrates
in Plato seemed not to suffer much more than from the fit of an
ague. Cato is much to be pitied, who mangled himself with
poniards; and Hannibal seems more subtle, who carried his de--
livery, not in the point but the pummel of his sword.*

* Demito naufragium, mors mihi munus erit.

* Plutarch's lives.

* Pummel, wherein he is said to have carried something where'-
by , upon a struggle or despair, he might deliver himself from all
misfortunes. Juvenal says, it was carried in a ring:
Cannarum vindex, et tanti sanguinis ultor,

Annulus.

Nor swords at hand, nor hissing darts afar,

Are doom'd t' avenge the tedious bloody war,

But poison drawn thro' a ring's hollow plate. — Dryden.

clxxi

The Egyptians were merciful contrivers, who destroyed their
malefactors by asps, charming their senses into an invincible
sleep, and killing as it were with Hermes his rod. The Turkish
emperor,* odious for other cruelty, was herein a remarkable
master of mercy, killing his favourite in his sleep, and sending
him from the shade into the house of darkness. He who had been
thus destroyed would hardly have bled at the presence of his
destroyer : when men are already dead by metaphor, and pass
but from one sleep unto another, wanting herein the eminent part
of severity, to feel themselves to die ; and escaping the sharpest
attendant of death, the lively apprehension thereof. But to learn
to die, is better than to study the ways of dying. Death will find
some ways to untie or cutthe most Gordian knots of life, and make
men's miseries as mortal as themselves; whereas evil spirits, as
undying substances, are inseparable from their calamities ; and,
therefore, they everlastingly struggle under their angustias, and
bound up with immortality can never get out of themselves.

PART THE THIRD
I

'TIS hard to find a whole age to imitate, or what century to prO'-
pose for example. Some have been far more approvable than
others; but virtue and vice, panegyrics and satires, scatteringly
to be found in all. History sets down not only things laudable,
but abominable: things which should never have been, or never
have been known ; so that noble patterns must be fetched here
and there from single persons, rather than whole nations ; and
from all nations, rather than any one. The world was early bad,
and the first sin the most deplorable of any. The younger world
afforded the oldest men, and perhaps the best and the worst, -when
length of days made virtuous habits heroical and immovable,
vicious, inveterate, and irreclaimable. And since 'tis said that the
imaginations of their hearts were evil, only evil, and continually
evil; it may be feared that their sins held pace with their lives;
and their longevity swelling their impieties, the longanimity of
God would no longer endure such vivacious abominations.
Their impieties were surely of a deep dye, which required the
whole element of water to wash them away, and overwhelmed
their memories with themselves : and so shut up the first windo ws
of time, leaving no histories of thoselongevous generations, when

* Solyman.
clxxii

men might have been properly historians, when Adam might
have read long lectures unto Methuselah, and Methuselah unto
Noah. For had we been happy in just historical accounts of that
unparalleled world, we might have been acquainted with won-
ders; and have understood not a little of the acts and undertakings
of Moses his mighty men, and men of renown of old; which might
have enlarged our thoughts, and made the world older unto us.
For the unknown part of time shortens the estimation, if not the
compute of it. What hath escaped our knowledge, falls not under
our consideration ; and what is and will be latent, is little better
than non-existent.
II

SOME things are dictated for our instruction, some acted for our
imitation ; wherein 'tis best to ascend unto the highest conformity,
and to the honour of the exemplar. He honours God, who imi-
tates him ; for what we virtuously imitate we approve and admire :
and since we delight not to imitate inferiors, we aggrandize and
magnify those we imitate ; since also we are most apt to imitate
those we love, we testify our affection in our imitation of the in-
imitable. To affect to be like, may be no imitation : to act, and
not to be what we pretend to imitate, is but a mimical conforma-
tion, and carrieth no virtue in it. Lucifer imitated not God, when
he said he would be like the highest: and he imitated not Jupiter,
who counterfeited thunder. Where imitation can go no farther,
let admiration step on, whereof there is no end in the wisest form
of men. Even angels and spirits have enough to admire in their
sublimer natures ; admiration being the act of the creature, and
not of God, who doth not admire Himself. Created natures allow
of swelling hyperboles: nothing can be said hyperbolically of
God, nor will H is attributes admit of expressions above their own
exuperances. Trismegistus his circle, whose centre is every-
where, and circumference nowhere, was no hyperbole. Words
cannot exceed where they cannot express enough. Even the most
winged thoughts fall at the setting out, and reach not the portal
of divinity.
Ill

IN bivious theorems, and Janus-faced doctrines, let virtuous
considerations state the determination. Look upon opinions as
thou dost upon the moon, and choose not the dark hemisphere
for thy contemplation. Embrace not the opacous and blind side
of opinions, but that which looks most luciferously or influen-
tially unto goodness. 'Tis better to think that there are guardian
clxxiii

spirits, than that there are no spirits to guard us ; that vicious per-
sons are slaves, than that there is any servitude in virtue ; that times
past have been better than times present, than that times were
always bad; and that to be men it surf iceth to be no better than men
in all ages, and so promiscuously to swim down the turbid stream,
and make up the grand confusion. Sow not thy understanding
with opinions, which make nothing of iniquities, and fallaciously
extenuate transgressions. Look upon vices and vicious objects
with hyperbolical eyes; and rather enlarge their dimensions, that
their unseen deformities may not escape thy sense, and their poi-
sonous parts and stings may appear massy and monstrous unto
thee: for the undiscerned particles and atoms of evil deceive us,
and we are undone by the invisibles of seeming goodness. We
are only deceived in what is not discerned, and to err is but to be
blind or dimsighted as to some perceptions.
IV

TO be honest in a right line,* and virtuous by epitome, be firm
unto such principles of goodness, as carry in them volumes of in-
struction and may abridge thy labour. And since instructions are

/ <j f

many, hold close unto those whereon the rest depend : so may
we have all in a few, and the law and the prophets in sacred writ
in stenography, and the Scripture in a nut-shell. To pursue the
osseous and solid part of goodness, which gives stability and recti-
tude to all the rest; to settle on fundamental virtues, and bid early
defiance unto mother- vices, which carry in their bowels the se-
minals of other iniquities; makes a short cut in goodness, and
strikes not off an head, but the whole neck of Hydra. For we are
carried into the dark lake, like the Egyptian river into the sea, by
seven principal ostiaries : the mother- sins of that number are the
deadly engines of evil spirits that undo us, and even evil spirits
themselves; and he who is under the chains thereof is not with-
out a possession. Mary Magdalen had more than seven devils,
if these with their imps were in her ; and he who is thus possessed,
may literally be named " Legion." Where such plants grow and
prosper, look for no champain or region void of thorns ; but pro-
ductions like the tree of Goa,* and forests of abomination.

* Linea recta brevissima.

* Arbor Goa de Ruyz, or Ficus Indica, whose branches send
down shoots which root in the ground, from whence there suc-
cessively rise others, till one tree becomes a wood.

clxxiv

V

GUIDE not the hand of God, nor order the finger of the
mightyunto thy will and pleasure; but sit quiet in the soft showers
of providence, and favourable distributions in this world, either
to thyself or others. And since not only judgments have their
errands , but mercies their commissions ; snatch not at every favour,
nor think thyself passed by if they fall upon thy neighbour. Rake
not up envious displacencies at things successful unto others,
which the wise disposer of all thinks not fit for thyself. Reconcile
the events of things unto both beings, that is, of this world and
the next: so will there not seem so many riddles in Providence,
nor various inequalities in the dispensation of things below.* If
thou dost not anoint thy face, yet put not on sackcloth at the
felicities of others. Repining at the good, draws on rejoicing at
the evils of others: and so falls into that inhuman vice,* for which
so few languages have a name. The blessed spirits above rejoice
at our happiness below: but to be glad at the evils of one another,
is beyond the malignity of hell; and falls not on evil spirits, who,
though they rejoice at our unhappiness, take no pleasure at the
afflictions of their own society or of their fellow natures. De-
generous heads ! who must be fain to learn from such examples,
and to be taught from the school of hell.
VI

GRAIN not thy vicious stains; nor deepen those swart tinctures,
which temper, infirmity, or ill habits have set upon thee ; and fix
not, by iterated depravations, what time might efface, or virtuous
washes expunge. He, who thus still advanceth in iniquity,
deepeneth his deformed hue; turns a shadow into night, and
makes himself a negro in the black jaundice; and so becomes
one of those lost ones, the disproportionate pores of whose brains
afford no entrance unto good motions, but reflect and frustrate
all counsels, deaf unto the thunder of the laws, and rocks unto the
cries of charitable commiserators. He who hath had the patience

* MS. Sloan. 1847 adds: "So mayst thou carry a smooth face,
and sit down in contentation, without those cancerous com-
motions which take up every suffering, displeasing at things
successful unto others; which the arch-disposer of all thinks not
fit for ourselves. To rejoice only in thine (own) good, exclusively
to that of others, is a stiff piece of self-love, wanting the supply-
ing oil of benevolence and charity."

clxxv

of Diogenes, to make orations unto statues, may more sensibly
apprehend how all -words fall to the ground, spent upon such a
surd and earless generation of men, stupid unto all instruction,
and rather requiring an exorcist than an orator for their conversion !
VII

BURDEN not the back of Aries, Leo, or Taurus, with thy faults;
nor make Saturn, Mars, or Venus, guilty of thy follies. Think not
to fasten thy imperfections on the stars, and so despairingly con-
ceive thyself under a fatality of being evil. Calculate thyself
within ; seek not thyself in the moon, but in thine own orb or
microcosmical circumference. Let celestial aspects admonish and
advertise, not conclude and determine thy ways. For since good
and bad stars moralize not our actions, and neither excuse or com -
mend, acquit or condemn our good or bad deeds at the present or
last bar; since some are astrologically well disposed, who are
morally highly vicious; not celestial figures,but virtuous schemes,
must dominate and state our actions. If we rightly understood
the names whereby God calleth the stars ; if we knew His name
for the dog-star, or by what appellation Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn
obey his will ; it might be a welcome accession unto astrology,
which speaks great things, and is fain to make use of appellations
from Greek and barbanck systems. Whatever influences, im-
pulsions, or inclinations there be from the lights above, it were
a piece of wisdom to make one of those wise men who overrule
their stars,* and with their own militia contend with the host of
heaven. Unto which attempt there want not auxiliaries from the
whole strength of morality, supplies from Christian ethics, in-
fluences also and illuminations from above, more powerful than
the lights of heaven.
VIII

CONFOUND not the distinctions of thy life which nature hath
divided; that is, youth, adolescence, manhood, and old age: nor
in these divided periods, wherein thou art in a manner four, con-
ceive thyself but one. Let every division be happy in its proper
virtues, nor one vice run through all. Let each distinction have
its salutary transition, and critically deliver thee from the imper-
fections of the former; so ordering the whole, that prudence and
virtue may have the largest section. Do as a child but when thou
art a child, and ride not on a reed at twenty. He who hath not
taken leave of the follies of his youth, and in his maturer state

* Sapiens dominabitur astris.
clxxvi

scarce got out of that division, disproportionately divideth his
days, crowds up the latter part of his lire, and leaves too narrow
a corner for the age of wisaom ; and so hath room to be a man
scarce longer than he hath been a youth. Rather than to make
this confusion, anticipate the virtues of age, and live long without
the infirmities of it. So mayst thou count up thy days as some do
Adam's;* that is, by anticipation; so mayst thou be coetaneous
unto thy elders, and a father unto thy contemporaries.

WHILE others are curious in the choice of good air, and chiefly
solicitous for healthful habitations, study thou conversation, and
be critical in thy consortion. The aspects, conjunctions, and con-
figurations of the stars, which mutually diversify, intend, or qualify
their influences, are but the varieties of their nearer or farther
conversation with one another, and like the consortion of men,
whereby they become better or worse, and even exchange their
natures. Since men live by examples, and will be imitating some-
thing, order thy imitation to thy improvement, not thy ruin. Look
not for roses in Attalus his garden,* or wholesome flowers in a
venomous plantation. And since there is scarce any one bad, but
some others are the worse for him; tempt not contagion byprox-
imity, and hazard not thyself in the shadow of corruption. He
who hath not early suffered this shipwreck, and in his younger
days escaped this Charybdis, may make a happy voyage, and
not come in with black sails into the port. Self-conversation, or
to be alone, is better than such consortion. Some school-men
tell us, that he is properly alone, with whom in the same place
there is no other of the same species. Nebuchadnezzar was alone,
though among the beasts of the field; and a wise man may be
tolerably said to be alone, though with a rabble of people little
better than beasts about him. Unthinking heads, who have not
learned to be alone, are in a prison to themselves, if they be not
also with others: whereas, on the contrary, they whose thoughts
are in a fair, and hurry within, are sometimes fain to retire into
company, to be out of the crowd of themselves. He who must
needs have company, must needs have sometimes bad company.
Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the
society of thyself; nor be only content, but delight to be alone

* Adam, thought to be created in the state of man, about thirty
years old.

* Attalus made a garden which contained only venomous plants.
clxxvii z

and single with Omnipresency. He who is thus prepared, the
day is not uneasy nor the night black unto him. Darkness may
bound his eyes, not his imagination. In his bed he may lie, like
Pompey and his sons,* in all quarters of the earth; may speculate
the universe, and enjoy the whole world in the hermitage of him-
self. Thus the old ascetick Christians found a paradise in a desert,
and with little converse on earth held a conversation in heaven ;
thus they astronomized in caves, and, though they beheld not
the stars, had the glory of heaven before them.
<X.

LET the characters of good things stand indelibly in thy mind,
and thy thoughts be active on them. Trust not too much unto
suggestions from reminiscential amulets, or artificial memo-
randums. Let the mortifying Janus of Covarrubias* be in thy
daily thoughts, not only on thy hand and signets. Rely not alone
upon silent and dumb remembrances. Behold not death's heads
till thou dost not see them, nor look upon mortifying objects till
thou overlookest them. Forget not how assuefaction unto any-
thing minorates the passion from it ; how constant objects lose
their hints, and steal an inadvertisement upon us. There is no
excuse to forget what everything prompts unto us. To thought-
ful observators, the whole world is a phylactery; and everything
we see an item of the -wisdom, power, or goodness of God.
Happy are they who verify their amulets, and make their phy-
lacteries speak in their lives and actions. To run on in despite of
the revulsions and pull-backs of such remoras aggravates our
transgressions. When death's heads on our hands have no in-
fluence upon our heads, and fleshless cadavers abate not the ex-
orbitances of the flesh; when crucifixes upon men's hearts sup-
press not their bad commotions, and his image who was mur-
dered for us withholds not from blood and murder; phylacteries
prove but formalities, and their despised hints sharpen our con-
demnation.

* Pompeios juvenes Asia atque Europa, sed ipsum terra tegit

Libyos.

% Don Sebastian de Covarrubias writ three centuries of moral

emblems in Spanish. In the 88th of the second century he sets

down two faces averse, and conjoined Janus-like; the one, a

gallant beautiful face, the other, a death's head face, with this

motto out of Ovid's Metamorphoses : —

Quid fuerim, quid simque, vide.

clxxviii

\*

XI

LOOK not for whales in the Euxinc sea, or expect great matters
where they are not to be found. Seek not for profundity in shal-
lowness, or fertility in a wilderness. Place not the expectations
of great happiness here below, or think to find heaven on earth :
wherein we must be content with embryon felicities, and fruitions
of doubtful faces : for the circle of our felicities makes but short
arches. In every clime we are in a Periscian state ; * and with our
light, our shadow and darkness walk about us. Our contentments
stand upon the tops of pyramids ready to fall off, and the inse--
curity of their enjoyments abruptethour tranquillities. What we
magnify is magnificent; but, like to the Colossus, noble without,
stuftwith rubbage and coarse metal within. Even the sun, whose
glorious outside we behold, may have dark and smoky entrails.
In vain we admire the lustre of anything seen: that which is truly
glorious is invisible. Paradise was but a part of the earth, lost not
only to our fruition but our knowledge. And if, according to old
dictates, no man can be said to be happy before death, the happi'-
ness of this life goes for nothing before it be over, and while we
think ourselves happy we do but usurp that name. Certainly, true
beatitude groweth not on earth, nor hath this world in it the ex-
pectations we have of it. He swims in oil, and can hardly avoid
sinking, who hath such light foundations to support him: 'tis,
therefore, happy that we have two worlds to hold on. To enjoy
true happiness, we must travel into a very far country, and even
out of ourselves ; for the pearl we seek for is not to be found in
the Indian but in the Empyrean ocean.
XII

ANSWER not the spur of fury, and be not prodigal or prodigi-
ous in revenge. Make not one in the Historia Horribilis ; * flay
not thy servant fora broken glass, nor pound him in a mortar who
offendeth thee; supererogate not in the worst sense, and overdo
not the necessities of evil ; humour not the injustice of revenge.
Be not stoically mistaken in the equality of sins, nor commuta'-
tively iniquitous in the valuation of transgressions ; but weigh
them in the scales of heaven, and by the weights of righteous
reason. Think that revenge too high, which is but level with the

4 "With shadows all around us/' The Periscii are those who,
living within the polar circle, see the sun move round them, and,
consequently, project their shadows in all directions. — Dr. J.
* A book so intitled, wherein are sundry horrid accounts,
clxxix

offence. Let thy arrows of revenge fly short; or be aimed like those
of Jonathan, to fall beside the mark. Too many there be to whom
a dead enemy smells well, and who find musk and amber in re-
venge. The ferity of such minds holds no rule in retaliations, re-
quiring too often a head for a tooth, and the supreme revenge for
trespasses which a night's rest should obliterate. But patient
meekness takes injuries like pills, not chewing but swallowing
them down, laconically suffering, and silently passing them over;
while angered pride makes a noise, like Homerican Mars,* at
every scratch of offences. Since women do most delight in re-
venge, it may seem but feminine manhood to be vindictive. If
thou must needs have thy revenge of thine enemy, with a soft
tongue break his bones,* heap coals of fire on his head, forgive
him and enjoy it. To forgive our enemies is a charming way of
revenge, and a short Caesarian conquest overcoming without a
blow; laying our enemies at our feet, under sorrow, shame and
repentance ; leaving our foes our friends, and solicitously inclined
to grateful retaliations. Thus to return upon our adversaries, is a
healing way of revenge; and to do good for evil a soft and melt-
ing ultion, a method taught from heaven, to keep all smooth on
earth. Common forcible ways make not an end of evil, but leave
hatred and malice behind them. An enemy thus reconciled is
little to be trusted, as wanting the foundation of love and charity,
and but for a time restrained by disadvantage or inability. If thou
hast not mercy for others, yet be not cruel unto thyself. To ru-
minate upon evils, to make critical notes upon injuries, and be
too acute in their apprehensions, is to add unto our own tortures,
to feather the arrows of our enemies, to lash ourselves with the
scorpions of our foes, and to resolve to sleep no more; for injuries
long dreamt on, take away at last all rest; and he sleeps but like
Regulus, who busieth his head about them.
XIII

AMUSE not thyself about the riddles of future things. Study
prophecies when they are become histories, and past hovering
in their causes. Eye well things past and present, and let con-
jectural sagacity suffice for things to come. There is a sober lati-
tude for prescience in contingencies of discoverable tempers,
whereby discerning heads see sometimes beyond their eyes, and

Tu miser exclamas, ut Stentora vincere possis,
Vel potius quantum Gradivus Homericus. — Juv.
* A soft tongue breaketh the bones. — Prov. xxv. 15.
clxxx

wise men become prophetical. Leave cloudy predictions to their
periods, and let appointed seasons have the lot of their accom-
plishments. 'Tis too early to study such prophecies before they
have been long made, before some train of tneir causes have al-
ready taken fire, lay open in part what lay obscure and before
buried unto us. For the voice of prophecies is like that of whis-
pering-places : they who are near, or at a little distance, hear no-
thing; those at the farthest extremity will understand all. But a
retrograde cognition of times past, and things which have already
been, is more satisfactory than a suspended knowledge of what
is yet unexistent. And the greatest part of time being already
wrapt up in things behind us; it's now somewhat late to bait after
thingsbefore us; for futurity still shortens, and time present sucks
in time to come. What is prophetical in one age proves historical
in another, and so must hold on unto the last of time ; when there
will be no room for prediction, when Janus shall lose one face,
and the long beard of time shall look like those of David's ser-
vants, shorn away upon one side; and when, if the expected Elias
should appear, he might say much of what is past, not much of
what's to come.
XIV

LIVE unto the dignity of thy nature, and leave it not disputable
at last, whether thou hast been a man; or, since thou art a com-
position of man and beast, how thou hast predominantly passed
thy days, to state the denomination. Unman not, therefore, thy-
self by a bestial transformation, nor realise old fables. Expose
not thyself by four-footed manners unto monstrous draughts, and
caricature representations. Think not after the old Pythagorean
conceit, what beast thou mayst be after death. Be not under any
brutal metempsychosis, while thou livest and walkest about
erectly under the scheme of man. In thine own circumference,
as in that of the earth, let the rational horizon be larger than the
sensible, and the circle of reason than of sense : let the divine part
be upward, and the region of beast below; otherwise 'tis but to
live invertedly, and with thy head unto the heels of thy antipodes.
Desert not thy title to a divine particle and union with invisibles.
Let true knowledge and virtue tell the lower world thou art a
part of the higher. Let thy thoughts be of things which have not
entered into the hearts of beasts: think of things long past, and
long to come : acquaint thyself with the choragium of the stars,
and consider the vast expansion beyond them. Let intellectual
tubes give thee a glance of things which visive organs reach not.
clxxxi

Have a glimpse of incomprehensibles; and thoughts of things,
which thoughts but tenderly touch. Lodge immaterials in thy
head; ascend unto invisibles; fill thy spirit with spirituals, with
the mysteries of faith, the magnalities of religion, and thy life with
the honour of God; without which, though giants in wealth and
dignity, we are but dwarfs and pygmies in humanity, and may
hold a pitiful rank in that triple division of mankind into heroes,
men, and beasts. For though human souls are said to be equal,
yet is there no small inequality in their operations ; some main-
tain the allowable station of men; many are far below it; and
some have been so divine, as to approach the apogeum of their
natures, and to be in the confinium of spirits.
XV

BEHOLD thyself by inward opticks and the crystalline of thy
soul. Strange it is, that in the most perfect sense there should be
so many fallacies, that we are fain to make a doctrine, and often
to see by art. But the greatest imperfection is in our inward sight,
that is, to be ghosts unto our own eyes; and while we are so
sharpsighted as to look through others, to be invisible unto our-
selves; for the inward eyes are more fallacious than the outward.
The vices we scoff at in others, laugh at us within ourselves.
Avarice, pride, falsehood lie undiscerned and blindly in us, even
to the age of blindness; and, therefore, to see ourselves interiorly,
we are fain to borrow other men's eyes; wherein true friends are
good informers, and censurers no bad friends. Conscience only,
that can see without light, sits in the Areopagy and dark tribunal
of our hearts, surveying our thoughts and condemning their obli-
quities. Happy is that state of vision that can see without light,
though all should look as before the creation, when there was
not an eye to see, or light to actuate a vision: wherein, notwith-
standing, obscurity is only imaginable respectively unto eyes ;
for unto God th ere was none: eternal light was ever; created light
was for the creation, not Himself; and, as He saw before the sun,
may still also see without it. In the city of the new Jerusalem
there is neither sun nor moon ; where glorified eyes must see by
the archetypal sun, or the light of God, able to illuminate in-
tellectual eyes,and make unknown visions. Intuitive perceptions
in spiritual beings may, perhaps, hold some analogy unto vision:
but yet how they see us, or one another, what eye, what light, or
what perception is required unto their intuition, is yet dark unto
our apprehension; and even how they see God, or how unto our
glorified eyes the beatifical vision will be celebrated, another
clxxxii

world must tell us, when perceptions will be new, and we may
hope to behold invisibles.
XVI

WHEN all looks fair about, and thou seest not a cloud so big
as a hand to threaten thee, forget not the wheel of things : think
of sullen vicissitudes, but beat not thy brains to foreknow them.
Be armed against such obscurities, rather by submission than
fore-knowledge. Theknowledgeoffutureevils mortifies present
felicities, and there is more content in the uncertainty or ignorance
of them. This favour our Saviour vouchsafed unto Peter, when
He foretold not his death in plain terms, and so by an ambig-
uous and cloudy delivery damped not the spirit of His disciples.
But in the assured fore-knowledge of the deluge, Noah lived
many years under the affliction or a flood ; and Jerusalem was
taken unto Jeremy, before it was besieged. And, therefore, the
wisdom of astrologers, who speak of future things, hath wisely
softened the severity of their doctrines; and even in their sad pre-
dictions, while they tell us of inclination not coaction from the
stars, they kill us not with Stygian oaths and merciless necessity,
but leave us hopes of evasion.
XVII

IF thou hast the brow to endure the name of traitor, perjured, or
oppressor, yet cover thy face when ingratitude is thrown at thee.
If that degenerous vice possess thee, hide thyself in the shadow
of thy shame, and pollute not noble society. Grateful ingenuities
are content to be obliged within some compass of retribution ;
and being depressed by the weight of iterated favours, may so
labour under their inabilities of requital, as to abate the content
from kindnesses. But narrow self-ended souls make prescription
of good offices, and obliged by often favours think others still
due unto them: whereas, if they but once fail, they prove so per-
versely ungrateful, as to make nothing of former courtesies, and
to bury all that's past. Such tempers pervert the generous course
of things ; for they discourage the inclinations of noble minds,
and make beneficency cool unto acts of obligation, whereby the
grateful world should subsist, and have their consolation. Com-
mon gratitude must be kept alive by the additionary fuel of new
courtesies: but generous gratitudes,though but once well obliged,
•without quickening repetitions or expectation of new favours,
have thankful minds for ever; for they write not their obligations
in sandy but marble memories, which wear not out but with
themselves,
clxxxiii

XVIII

THINK not silence the wisdom of fools ; but, if rightly timed,
the honour of wise men, who have not the infirmity, but the virtue
of taciturnity; and speak not out of the abundance, but the well-
weighed thoughts of their hearts. Such silence maybe eloquence,
and speak thy worth above the power of words. Make such a
one thy friend, in whom princes may be happy, and great counsels
successful. Let him have the key of thy heart, who hath the lock
of his own, which no temptation can open ; where thy secrets
may lastingly lie, like the lamp in Olybius his urn,* alive, and
light, but close and invisible.
XIX

LEX thy oaths be sacred, and promises be made upon the altar
of thy heart. Call not Jove^ to witness with a stone in one hand,
and a straw in another ; and so make chaff and stubble of thy vows.
Worldly spirits, whose interest is their belief, make cobwebs of
obligations ; and, if they can find ways to elude the urn of the
Praetor, 'will trust the thunderbolt of Jupiter: and, therefore, if
they should as deeply swear as Osman to Bethlem Gabor ; * yet
whether they would be bound by those chains, and not find ways
to cut such Grordian knots, we could have no just assurance. But
honest men's words are Stygian oaths, and promises inviolable.
These are not the men for whom the fetters of law were first
forged; they needed not the solemnness of oaths; by keeping their
faith they swear, and evacuate such confirmations. *
XX

THOUGH the world be histrionical, and most men live ironi-
cally, yet be thouwhat thou singly art, and personate only thy self.
Swim smoothly in the stream of thy nature, and live but one man.
To single hearts doubling is discruciating : such tempers must
s weat to dissemble, andpro ve but hypocritical hypocrites. Simu-
lation must be short: men do not easily continue a counterfeiting
life, or dissemble unto death. He who counterfeiteth, acts a part;
and is, as it were, out of himself: which, if long, proves so irk-
some, that men are glad to pull off their vizards, and resume

* Which after many hundred years was found burning under
ground, and went out as soon as the air came to it.

* Jovem lapide jurare.

* See the oath of Sultan Osman, in his life, in the addition to
Knoll's Turkish history.

* Colendo fidem jurant. — Curtius.
clxxxiv

themselves again ; no practice being able to naturalize such un*-
naturals, or make a man rest content not to be himself. And,
therefore, since sincerity is thy temper, let veracity be thy virtue,
in words, manners, and actions. To offer at iniquities, -which
have so little foundations in thee, were to be vicious up-hill, and
strain for thy condemnation. Persons viciously inclined, want
no wheels to make them actively vicious ; as naving the elater
and spring of their own natures to facilitate their iniquities. And,
therefore, so many, who are sinistrous unto good actions, are
ambi'-dexterous unto bad; and Vulcans in virtuous paths, Achil-
leses in vicious motions.
XXI

REST not in the high*- strained paradoxes of old philosophy,
supported by naked reason, and the reward of mortal felicity; but
labour in the ethics of faith, built upon heavenly assistance, and
the happiness of both beings. Understand the rules, but swear
not unto the doctrines of Zeno or Epicurus. Look beyond An~
toninus, and terminate not thy morals in Seneca or Epictetus.
Let not the twelve but the two tables be thy law : let Pythagoras
be thy remembrancer, not thy textuary and final instructor: and
learn the vanity of the world, rather from Solomon than Phocy-
lides. Sleep not in the dogmas of the Peripatus, Academy, or
Porticus. Be a moralist of the mount, an Epictetus in the faith, and
Christianize thy notions.
XXII

IN seventy or eighty years, a man may have a deep gust of the
world; know what it is, what it can afford, and what 'tis to have
been a man. Such a latitude of years may hold a considerable
corner in the general map of time; and a man may have a curt
epitome of the whole course thereof in the days of his own life;
may clearly see he hath but acted over his forefathers; what it was
to live in ages past, and what living will be in all ages to come.
He is like to be the best judge of time, who hath lived to see about
the sixtieth part thereof. Persons of short times may know what
'tis to live, but not the life of man, who, having little behind them,
are but Januses of one face, and know not singularities enough
to raise axioms of this world: but such a compass of years will
show new examples of old things, parallelisms of occurrences
through the whole course of time, and nothing be monstrous unto
him; who may in that time understand not only the varieties of
men, but the variation of himself, and how many men he hath
been in that extent of time,
clxxxv 2 a

He may have a close apprehension what is to be forgotten, while
he hath lived to find none who could remember his father, or
scarce the friends of his youth ; and may sensibly see with what a
face in no long time oblivion will look upon himself. His pro-
geny may never be his posterity ; he may go out of the world less
related than he came into it; and considering the frequent mor'-
tality in friends and relations, in such a term of time, he may pass
away divers years in sorrow and black habits, and leave none to
mourn for himself; orbity may be his inheritance, and riches his
repentance.

In such a thread of time, and long observation of men, he may
acquireaphysiognomicalintuitiveknowledge;judgetheinteriors
by the outside, and raise conjectures at first sight ; and knowing
what men have been, what they are, what children probably -will
be, may in the present age behold a good part and the temper of
the next ; and since so many live by the rules of constitution, and
so few overcome their temperamental inclinations, make no ini'-
probable predictions.

Such a portion of time will afford a large prospect backward,
and authentic reflections how far he hath performed the great
intention of his being, in the honour of his Maker : whether he
hath made good the principles of his nature, and what he was
made to be ; what characteristic and special mark he hath left, to
be observable in his generation; whether he hath lived to purpose
or in vain ; and what he hath added, acted, or performed, that
might considerably speak him a man.

In such an age, delights will be undelightful,and pleasures grow
stale unto him ; antiquated theorems -will revive, and Solomon's
maxims be demonstrations unto him ; hopes or presumptions be
over, and despair growup of any satisfaction below. And having
been long tossed in the ocean of this world, he will by that time
feel the in-draught of another, unto which this seems but pre-
paratory, and without it of no high value. He will experimen-
tally find the emptiness of all things, and the nothing of what is
past; and wisely grounding upon true Christian expectations,
finding so much past, will wholly fix upon what is to come. He
will longfor perpetuity, and live as though he made haste to be
happy. The last may prove the prime part of his life, and those
his best days which he lived nearest heaven*
XXIII

LIVE happy in the Elysium of a virtuously composed mind, and
let intellectual contents exceed the delights wherein mere plea-
clxxxvi

surists place their paradise. Bear not too slack reins upon pleasure,
nor let complexion or contagion betray thee unto the exorbitancy
of delight. Make pleasure thy recreation or intermissive relaxa-
tion, not thy Diana, life, and profession. Voluptuousness is as
insatiable ascovetousness. Tranquillity is better than jollity, and
to appease pain than to invent pleasure. Our hard entrance into
the -world, our miserable going out of it, our sicknesses, disturb-
ances, and sad rencounters in it, do clamorously tell us we come
not into the world to run a race of delight, but to perform the
sober acts and serious purposes of man ; -which to omit were foully
to miscarry in the advantage of humanity, to play away an un-
iterable life, and to have lived in vain. Forget not the capital end,
and frustrate not the opportunity of once living. Dream not of
any kind of metempsychosis or transanimation, but into thine
own body, and that after a long time; and then also unto wail or
bliss, according to thy first and fundamental life. Upon a curricle
in this world depends a long course of the next, and upon a narrow-
scene here an endless expansion hereafter. In vain some think
to have an end of their beings with their lives. Things cannot
get out of their natures, or be or not be in despite of their consti-
tutions. Rational existences in heaven perish not at all, and but
partially on earth: that -which is thus once, -will in some way be
always : the first living human soul is still alive, and all Adam
hath found no period.
XXIV

SINCE the stars of heaven do differ in glory; since it hath
pleased the Almighty hand to honour the north pole with lights
above the south; since there are some stars so bright that they can
hardly be looked on, some so dim that they can scarce be seen,
and vast numbers not to be seen at all, even by artificial eyes ;
read thou the earth in heaven, and things below from above.
Look contentedly upon the scattered difference of things, and
expect not equality in lustre, dignity, or perfection, in regions or
persons below ; where numerous numbers must be content to
stand like lacteous or nebulous stars, little taken notice of, or dim
in their generations. All -which may be contentedly allowable
in the affairs and ends of this world, and in suspension unto -what
will be in the order of things hereafter, and the new system of
mankind -which -will be in the -world to come; -when the last may
be the first, and the first the last ; when Lazarus may sit above
Caesar, and the just, obscure on earth, shall shine like the sun
in heaven ; -when personations shall cease, and histrionism of
clxxxvii

happiness be over; when reality shall rule, and all shall be as they
shall be for ever.
XXV

WHEN the stoic said that life* would not be accepted, if it
were offered unto such as knew it, he spoke too meanly of that
state of being which placeth us in the form of men. It more de-
preciates the value of this life, that men would not live it over
again ; for although they would still live on, yet few or none can
endure to think of being twice the same men upon earth, and
some had rather never have lived than to tread over their days
once more. Cicero in a prosperous state had not the patience to
think of beginning in a cradle again. Job would not only curse
the day of his nativity, but also of his renascency, if he were to
act over his disasters and the miseries of the dunghill. But the
greatest underweening of this life is to undervalue that unto
which this is but exordial, or a passage leading unto it. The great
advantage of this mean life is thereby to stand in a capacity of a
better; for the colonies of heaven must be drawn from earth, and
the sons of the first Adam are only heirs unto the second. Thus
Adam came into this world with the power also of another; not
only to replenish the earth, buttheeverlastingmansionsof heaven.
Where we were when the foundations or the earth were laid,
when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God
shouted for joy ,* He must answer who asked it ; who understands
entities of preordination, and beings yet unbeing; who hath in
His intellect the ideal existences of things, and entities before their
extances. Though it looks but like an imaginary kind of exist-
ency, to be before we are; yet since we are under the decree or
prescience of a sure and omnipotent power, it maybe somewhat
more than a non--entity, to be in that mind unto which all things
are present.
XXVI

IF the end of the world shall have the same foregoing signs, as
the period of empires, states, and dominions in it, that is, corrup-
tion of manners, inhuman degenerations, and deluge of iniquities ;
it may be doubted, whether that final time be so far off, of whose
day and hour there can be no prescience. But while all men doubt,
and none can determine how long the world shall last, some may
wonder that it hath spun out so long and unto our days. For if

* Vitam nemo acciperet, si daretur scientibus. — Seneca.

* Jobxxxviii.
clxxxviii

the Almighty had not determined a fixed duration unto it, ac-
cording to His mighty and merciful designments in it; if He had
not said unto it, as He did unto a part of it, hitherto shalt thou
go and no farther; if we consider the incessant and cutting pro-
vocations from the earth ; it is not without amazement, how His
patience hath permitted so long a continuance unto it; how He,
who cursed the earth in the first days of the first man, and drowned
it in the tenth generation after, should thus lastingly contend with
flesh, and yet defer the last flames. For since He is sharply pro-
voked every moment, yet punisheth to pardon, and forgives to
forgive again ; what patience could be content to act over such
vicissitudes, or accept of repentances which must have after-
penitences, His goodness can only tell us. And surely if the
patience of heaven were not proportionable unto the provoca-
tions from earth, there needed an intercessor not only for the sins,
but the duration of this world, and to lead it up unto the present
computation. Without such a merciful longanimity , the heavens
would never be so aged as to grow old like a garment. It were
in vain to infer from the doctrine of the sphere, that the time might
come, when Capella, a noble northern star, would have its motion
in the equator; that the northern zodiacal signs would at length
be the southern, the southern the northern, and Capricorn become
our Cancer. However, therefore, the wisdom of the Creator hath
ordered theduration of the world, yet since the end thereof brings
the accomplishment of our happiness, since some would be con-
tent that it should have no end, since evil men and spirits do fear
it may be too short, since good men hope it may not be too long;
the prayer of the saints under the altar will be the supplication
of the righteous world, that his mercy would abridge their lan-
guishing expectation, and hasten the accomplishment of their
happy state to come.
XXVII

THOUGH goodmenareoftentakenaway from the evil to come;
though some in evil days have been glad that they were old, nor
long to behold the iniquities of a wicked world, or judgments
threatened by them; yet is it no small satisfaction unto honest
minds, to leave the world in virtuous well-tempered times, under
a prospect of good to come, and continuation of worthy ways
acceptable unto God and man. Men who die in deplorable days,
which they regretfully behold, have not their eyes closed with
the like content ; while they cannot avoid the thoughts of pro-
ceeding or growing enormities, displeasing unto that spirit unto
clxxxix

whom they arc then going, whose honour they desire in all times
and throughout all generations. If Lucifer could be freed from
his dismal place, he would little care though the rest were left
behind. Too many there may be of Nero's mind,* who, if their
own turn were served, would not regard what became of others;
and when they die themselves, care not if all perish. But good
men's wishes extend beyond their lives, for the happiness of times
to come, and never to be known unto them. And, therefore, while
so many question prayers for the dead, they charitably pray for
those who are not yet alive ; they are not so enviously ambitious
to go to heaven by themselves; they cannot but humbly wish,
that the little flock might be greater, the narrow gate wider, and
that, as many are called, so not a few might be chosen.
XXVIII

THAT a greater number of angels remained in heaven, than
fell from it, the schoolmen will tell us; that the number of blessed
souls will not come short of that vast number of fallen spirits, we
have the favourable calculation of others. What age or century
hath sent most souls unto heaven, he can tell who vouchsafeth
that honour unto them. Though the number of the blessed must
be complete before the world can pass away; yet since the world
itself seems in the wane, and we have no such comfortable prog-
nosticks of latter times ; since a greater part of time is spun than
is to come, and the blessed roll already much replenished; happy
are those pieties, which solicitously look about, and hasten to
make one of that already much filled and abbreviated list to come.
XXIX

THINK not thy time short in this world, since the world itself
isnotlong. Thecreatedworldisbutasmallparenthesisin eternity,
and a short interposition, for a time, between such a state of dura-
tion as was before it and may be after it. And if we should allow
of the old tradition, that the world should last six thousand years,
it could scarce have the name of old, since the first man lived near
a sixth part thereof, and seven Methuselahs would exceed its
whole duration. However, to palliate the shortness of our lives,
and somewhat to compensate our brief term in this world, it's
good to know as much as we can of it; and also, so far as possibly
in us lieth, to hold such a theory of times past, as though we had

* Nero often had this saying in his mouth, 'E/xou Oavwros
Attx^rw Trvpi: "when I am once dead, let the earth and fire be
jumbled together." — Dr. J.
cxc

seen the same. He who hath thus considered the world, as also
how therein things long past have been answered by things
present; how matters in one age have been acted over in another;
and how there is nothing new under the sun; may conceive him-
self in some manner to have lived from the beginning, and be as
old as the world; and if he should still live on, 'twould be but
the same thing.
XXX*

LASTLY; if length of days be thy portion, make it not thy ex-
pectation. Reckon not upon long life : think every day the last,
and live always beyond thy account. He that so often surviveth
his expectation lives many lives, and will scarce complain of the
shortness of his days. Time past is gone like a shadow; make
time to come present. Approximate thy latter times by present
apprehensions of them : be like a neighbour unto the grave, and
think there is but little to come. And since there is something of
us that will still live on, join both lives together, and live in one
but for the other. He who thus ordereth the purposes of this life,
will never be far from the next ; and is in some manner already
in it, by a happy conformity, and close apprehension of it. Ana
if, as we have elsewhere declared, any have been so happy, as
personally to understand Christian annihilation, ecstasy, exolu-
tion, transformation, the kiss of the spouse, and ingression into
the divine shadow, according to mystical theology, they have
already had an handsome anticipation of heaven ; the world is
in a manner over, and the earth in ashes unto them.

* Sect. XXX. This section terminating at the words "and close
apprehension of it/' concludes the Letter to a Friend.

cxci

ON DREAMS.

2b

HALF our days we pass in the shadow of the earth; and the
brother of death exacteth a third part of our lives. A good part
of our sleep is peered out with visions and fantastical objects,
wherein we are confessedly deceived. Thedaysupplieth us with
truths; the night with fictions and falsehoods, which uncomfort-
ably divide the natural account of our beings. And, therefore,
having passed the day in sober labours and rational enquiries of
truth, we are fain to betake ourselves unto such a state of being,
wherein the soberest heads have acted all the monstrosities of
melancholy, and which unto open eyes are no better than folly
and madness.

Happy are they that go to bed with grand music, like Pythagoras,
or have ways to compose the fantastical spirit, whose unruly
wanderings take off inward sleep, filling our heads with St.
Anthony's visions, and the dreams of Lipara in the sober cham-
bers of rest.

Virtuous thoughts of the day lay up good treasures for the night;
whereby the impressions of imaginary forms arise into sober
similitudes, acceptable unto our slumbering selves and prepara-
tory unto divine impressions. Hereby Solomon's sleep was
happy. Thus prepared, Jacob might well dream of angels upon
a pillow of stone. And the best sleep of Adam might be the best
of any after.

That there should be divine dreams seems unreasonably doubted
by Aristotle. That there are demoniacal dreams we have little
reason to doubt. Why may there not be angelical j If there be
guardian spirits, they may not be inactively about us in sleep; but
may sometimes order our dreams: and many strange hints, insti-
gations, or discourses, Which are so amazing unto us, may arise
from such foundations.

But the phantasms of sleep do commonly walk in the great road
of natural and animal dreams, wherein the thoughts or actions of
the day are acted over and echoed in the night. Who can there-
fore wonder that Chrysostom should dream of St. Paul, who
daily read his epistles ; or than Cardan, whose head was so taken
up about the stars, should dream that his soul was in the moon !
Pious persons, whose thoughts are daily busied about heaven,
and the blessed state thereof, can hardly escape the nightly phan-
tasms of it, which though sometimes taken for illuminations, or
divine dreams, yet rightly perpended may prove but animal
visions, and natural night-scenes of their awaking contempla-
tions,
cxcv

Many dreams arc made out by sagacious exposition, and from
the signature of their subjects; carrying their interpretation in
their fundamental sense and mystery of similitude, whereby, he
that understands upon what natural fundamental every notion
dependeth, may, by symbolical adaptation, hold a ready way to
read the characters of Morpheus. In dreams of such a nature,
Artemidorus, Achmet, and Astrampsichus, from Greek, Egyp-
tian, and Arabian oneiro-criticism, may hint some interpretation :
who, while we read of a ladder in Jacob's dream, will tell us that
ladders and scalary ascents signify preferment ; and while we con-
sider the dream of Pharaoh, do teach us that rivers overflowing
speak plenty, lean oxen, famine and scarcity; and therefore it was
but reasonable in Pharaoh to demand the interpretation from his
magicians, who, being Egyptians, should have been well versed
in symbols and the hieroglyphical notions of things. The greatest
tyrant in such divinations was Nabuchodonosor, while, besides
the interpretation, he demanded the dream itself; which being
probably determined by divine immission, might escape the
common road of phantasms, that might have been traced by
Satan.

When Alexander, going to besiege Tyre, dreamt of a Satyr, it
was no hard exposition for a Grecian to say, "Tyrewill be thine."
He that dreamed that he saw his father -washed by Jupiter and
anointed by the sun, had cause to fear that he might be crucified,
whereby his body would be washed by the rain, and drop by
the heat of the sun. The dream of Vespasian was of harder ex-
position; as also that of the emperor Mauritius, concerning his
successor Phocas. And a man might have been hard put to it, to
interpret the language of ^Esculapius, when to a consumptive
person he held forth his fingers ; implying thereby that his cure
lay in dates, from the homonomy of the Greek, which signifies
dates and fingers.

We owe unto dreams that Galen was a physician, Dion an his-
torian, and that the world hath seen some notable pieces of Car-
dan; yet, he that should order his affairs by dreams, or make the
night a rule unto the day, might be ridiculously deluded ; * where-

* Compare the closing passage of " The Garden of Cyrus : "
" But the quincunx of heaven runs low, and 'tis time to close the
five ports of knowledge. We are unwilling to spin out our
awaking thoughts into the phantasms of sleep, which often con-
tinueth precogitations ; making cables of cobwebs, and wilder -
cxcvi

in Cicero is much to be pitied, who ha ving excellently discoursed
of the vanity of dreams, was yet undone by the flattery of his own,
which urged him to apply himself unto Augustus.
However dreams maybe fallacious concerning outward events,
yet may they be truly significant at home; and whereby we may
more sensiblyunderstandourselves. Men act in sleep with some
conformity unto their awaked senses ; and consolations or dis-
couragements may be drawn from dreams which intimately tell
us ourselves. Luther was not like to fear a spirit in the night, when
such an apparition would not terrify him in the day. Alexander
would hardly have run away in the sharpest combats of sleep,
nor Demosthenes have stood stoutly to it, who was scarce able
to do it in his prepared senses. Persons of radical integrity will
not easily be perverted in their dreams, nor noble minds do pitiful
things in sleep. Crassus would have hardly been bountiful in a
dream, whose fist was so close awake. But a man might have
lived all his life upon the sleeping hand of Antonius.
There is an art to make dreams, as well as their interpretations;
and physicians will tell us that some food makes turbulent, some
gives quiet, dreams. Cato, who doated upon cabbage, might find

nesses of handsome groves. Beside Hippocrates hath spoke so
little, and the oneirocritical masters have left such frigid inter-
pretations from plants, that there is little encouragement to dream
of Paradise itself. Nor will the sweetest delight of gardens afford
much comfort in sleep ; wherein the dulness of that sense shakes
hands with delectable odours ; and though in the bed of Cleo-
patra, can hardly with any delight raise up the ghost of a rose.
Night, which Pagan theology could make the daughter of Chaos,
affords no advantage to the description of order; although no
lower than that mass can we derive its genealogy. All things
began in order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again ;
according to the ordainer of* order and mystical mathematicks of
the city of heaven.

Though Somnus in Homer be sent to rouse up Agamemnon, I
find no such effects in these drowsy approaches of sleep. To
keep our eyes open longer, were but to act our Antipodes. The
huntsmen are up in America, and they are already past their first
sleep in Persia. But who can be drowsy at that hour which freed
us from everlasting sleep S or have slumbering thoughts at that
time, when sleep itself must end, and as some conjecture all shall
awake again."

cxcvn

the crude effects thereof in his sleep; wherein the Egyptians
might find some ad vantage by their superstitious abstinence from
onions. Pythagoras might have calmer sleeps, if he totally ab--
stained from beans. Even Daniel, the great interpreter of dreams,
in his leguminous diet, seems to have chosen no advantageous
food for quiet sleeps, according to Grecian physic.
To add unto the delusion of dreams, the fantastical objects seem
greater than they are; and being beheld in the vaporous state of
sleep, enlarge their diameters unto us; whereby it may prove
more easy to dream of giants than pigmies. Democritus might
seldom dream of atoms, who so often thought of them. He almost
might dream himself a bubble extending unto the eighth sphere.
A little water makes a sea; a small puff of wind a tempest, A
grain of sulphur kindled in the blood may make a flame like JE tna;
and a small spark in the bowels of Olympias a lightning over all
the chamber.

But, beside these innocent delusions, there is a sinful state of
dreams. Death alone, not sleep, is able to put an end unto sin;
and there may be a night'-book of our iniquities; for beside the
transgressions of the day, casuists will tell us of mortal sins in
dreams, arising from evil precogitations; meanwhile human law
regards not noctambulos; and if a night- walker should break his
neck, or kill a man, takes no notice of it.

Dionysius was absurdly tyrannical to kill a man for dreaming
that he had killed him ; and really to take away his life, who had
but fantastically taken away his. Lamia was ridiculously unjust
to sue a young man for a reward, who had confessed that plea--
sure from her in a dream which she had denied unto his awaking
senses: conceiving that she had merited somewhat from his fan--
tastical fruition and shadow of herself. If there be such debts, we
owe deeply unto sympathies; but the common spirit of the world
must be ready in such arrearages.

If some have swooned, they may have also died in dreams, since
death is but a confirmed swooning. Whether Plato died in a
dream, as some deliver, he must rise again to inform us. That
some have never dreamed, is as improbable as that some have
never laughed. That children dream not the first half-year; that
men dream not in some countries, with many more, are unto me
sick men's dreams; dreams out of the ivory gate, and visions be--
fore midnight.

*$t THE END.
cxcviii

ENDS THIS EDITION OF RELIGIO
MEDICI AND OTHER ESSAYS BY SIR THOMAS
BROWNE;EDITEDBYC.J.HOLMES;DECORATED
BY C. S. RICKETTS, UNDER WHOSE SUPER-
VISION THE BOOK HAS BEEN PRINTED
AT THE BALLANTYNE PRESS.

J0Sold by Hacon & Ricketts, The
Vale Press, 17 Craven Street, Strand,
London, 6r John Lane, New York,

London
M
C
M
I
I.

&;